The First Code?

A code is an agreement, between communicating parties, for what will be signified by some particular signifier, or reciprocally, what signifier to use for some particular signified.

But negotiating agreement on any code seems to require another code in which agreement on the new code would be negotiated. In any theory of origins, the first code then becomes impossible because, being the first code, there is no prior code with which to negotiate that first code.

Either codes go back in time indefinitely, for which the problem of the first code becomes unreachable (God), or that codes can be negotiated in terms of something other than a prior code.

The first alternative reads like a cop-out but is otherwise one solution. The second is more interesting. It opens up the possibility of further thought.

One way of creating a new code, without requiring a prior code, is to reach agreement on the code, after the "code" has been created rather than before. In this scenario the "code" does not yet fully exist as a code. But can evolve into one. We can postulate the creation of a completely random "code" which has the benefit of not requiring any prior code in which to be created. Now such a "code" can't be a proper code if it's completely random since nothing can be communicated via the random. However the random, despite the absence of any apparent content, and despite being random, does exhibit properties. For example a random list of numbers, when added together, yields a number close to zero. And the longer the list the closer to zero becomes it's sum. The reason is simple enough. In an infinite list of random numbers, for every positive number there will exist, in the list, it's equal but opposite number: it's negative. Added together the result is zero.

This is the domain of statistics which is not quite the same thing as mathematics. In mathematics there is no such thing as the random. So mathematically we would be in trouble postulating the first "code" as completely random. However we can postulate that mathematics is not the be all end all - that the random can be a fundamental object for which mathematics is simply not the correct framework in which to postulate such. However we can still employ a mathematical framework using psuedo-random numbers as a substitute, so long as we remember the substitution and the possible side-effects (of which there are many).

In a statistical framework the number zero is not a primary object (as it is in mathematics), but one that would be created if an infinite sum of random numbers were possible.

In this light we can treat Mathematics as the language of eternity and Statistics as the language of the temporary.

From within the temporary we can imagine (postulate) a random code which, given time, could begin to resemble otherwise coherent rational mathematical structure such as zero. However we are mindful that in an otherwise empty universe (codeless) that the best a random system could ever code is precisely that zero, ie. nothing.

However, in the interim (prior to reframing such within the eternal) there will be all manner of structures occur, the only limitation on such is that be temporary. Because if we take any of these structures to their logical conclusion (into the eternal) we are back to an empty universe, back to zero. To put it another way, the random must, in the end, signify zero.

However we are not discussing the end. We are discussing the beginning.

While the random, for which we have supposed it's spontaneous existance outside of the eternal, eventually auto-signifies (in eternity) a zero in the mean time we have a signified (spontaneous existance) for which there is no corresponding signifier in the eternal, other than what it would eventually become: zero. Until then it requires a signifier other than zero: the non-zero. Or perhaps "one" (historically speaking, the first number).

So we have here, in a somewhat elaborate argument, postulated a first code, 1 and 0, which can come about without necessarily requiring a prior code. Certainly we have used codes to describe it, but the object of that description does not necessarily rely on the description. It all depends on whether the random can exist. We can only theorise it's existence and one at odds with mathematics, but in so doing we have a way of thinking how the first dialectic can occur.