In the Beginning, #2

Thinking about the 'why anything' problem I mentioned before, it occurred to me today that the idea of zero in the mathematical sense is a purely abstract mental construction: I don't think there's any convincing evidence for it being meaningful in describing anything physically real, only for counting objects (which are themselves arbitrary discretisations of the space-time continuum) or for succinctly describing the situation where opposing forces are conveniently balanced*. That seems to back up the assertion that it's not a good analogy for general nothing.

*A vacuum isn't zero matter either; it's (probably) quantum foam, a suggestion which I find most compellingly supported by the Casimir effect and Hawking radiation (although the latter is somewhat controversial).

Basically I think my answer to the question is that something and nothing (in the sense one thinks of when one says "why something rather than nothing") are not actually in the same class; one is a physical entity, the other a mathematical construct (maths is generally very good at describing reality, but it still remains a description, not the same thing). It's this error of comparison which renders the question meaningless (rather like "why the square root of minus one, not butterscotch flavour?").

If we do away with zero as a physical reality, it seems tempting to suggest we should also do away with its inverse, infinity. Perhaps that could help explain why the speed of light is finite? It seems like it must also have implications for black holes.

The remaining physical question - which is not necessarily simplified - appears to be "why is the universe not homogenous?"

p.s. After writing this I had a wander on Wikipedia looking for related items and found this, which I'm not sure I completely agree with, but which is nonetheless clearly a related chain of thought. Interesting that it comes out just as I'm considering the issue...