‘One’ is the Most Important Symbol in Our Languages

Our lives have been determind primarily by the meaning of the word "one.' Until all fields of thought required the use of the word ‘one’ to tell the truth, life was more confused than rational. For instance, this is why religions say that God is one, why accountants start counting with one, why mathematicians form all integers with one, and why atheists argue that God does not exist Yet, Hegel argued that the word 'one' has two meanings.

First, there is a one that has no parts. This one is God and represents one truth. And, the second one has parts. Today, most people call the second one a whole or system. This one is a multiplicity and is found only in the universe where they are related and represent all relative truths. I believe that Hegel extracted these two meanings from Plato’s Parmenides dialogue, which begins at 137c.

Using logical categories to define concepts, as Aristotle did, Plato says that one is not many. It thus has no parts and is not a whole because a part can be only a part of a whole. Without parts, the one has no beginning, end, or middle, has no motion or rest, has nothing to do with time and is not limited in any way. Using logical categories, he thus concludes that ‘one’ has no being and in no sense is (141e).

To make ‘one’ a real symbol in our symbolic languages, Plato rejects Aristotle’s method of defining concepts and creates an hypothesis. His hypothesis asserts that ‘one is.’ He then determines the consequences of this methodological shift. At 160b, he concludes the consequence and says, ‘Thus, if there is a one, the one is both all things and nothing, whatsoever, alike with reference to itself and to the others.’ In the very next sentence, he says, ‘We have to consider what follows if the one is not. In 166, he says,’If there is no one, there is nothing at all.

Plato is thus saying that without a monotheistic God, the word one is unreal and neither God nor the universe exist. Since mathematics and all fields of science need the real one to make their symbolic languages more precise, the oneness of God is the true path to all human knowledge and truths. Plato shows that atheists recognize only half of the world and thus vagely because they do use only the second 'one.'

This work of Plato explains why the Roman Church wrongly chose Aristotle's logical methodology over Plato's scientific methodology on God and the universe and the Roman Church maintained Aristotle's method until the 14th century, when Eastern Christians introduced Plato to Western Christians. This poor choice of the Roman Church and later choices of many Jews, Christians and Muslims, must make corrections to their religious teaching and symbolic language teachings.