0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...
Looks familiar? This is a number sequence we'd probably seen in high school maths textbooks, without any idea what it means. This is a Fibonacci sequence, a sequence of number where each term is the sum of the two terms before it. For example, the seventh term, 8, is the sum of the fifth and sixth term, 3 and 5.
What most people didn't realized, though, and what most high school maths teacher got wrong, is that the Fibonacci sequence is actually a geometric progression, with a common ratio of 1.618, which is also known as the Golden Ratio. Try it yourself by expanding the sequence - the answer is true.
But what I find more intriguing is how 0, the first term, can turn into 1, the second term. Surely any number multiplied by zero equals nil, so what happened?
My "conjecture" answer is: quantum theory. Or rather, quantum evolution. To explain this, lets go back to the beginning of life, just as this transition from nil to one occurs in the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence. According to quantum theory, the first replicating protein molecule that forms from the polymerization of amino acids did not occur randomly. Just as a potential - life or not life, for the lack of description - can collapse either way, the environment acts a a measuring tool, which in turn, collapse the potential that allows life to form out of the primordial soup of amino acids.
Life started not only because the environment caused it to happen to the act of measuring, it's also because life is the better measuring tool for any potential. Life then evolved because the environment continues to measure It, even as Life measures Itself.
Similarly, won't that be the way nil became one? A collapse of potential because one is a better measuring tool than nil, then the Golden Ratio kicks in to expand the Fibonacci sequence into the infinite. Of course, you may disregard this as nothing but hogwash, and I accept that, because as I said, this is merely conjecture, not a proven theory.
Also, since the Fibonacci sequence has a common ratio, we can reverse the whole sequence by simply changing the Golden Ratio into a negative number, i.e. -1.618. A reminder that just as there are positives and negatives in maths and numbers, life itself may collapse one way or the other.
... -89, 55, -34, 21, -13, 8, -5, 3, -2, 1, -1, 0
