Here's another website on Emptiness that talks about
potentiality:
http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html
Regarding phenomena:
An important class of phenomena in the subatomic world is
defined by the various interactions between particles. In fact,
there is no clear distinction between the notions of phenomena,
particles, and interactions, although interactions can be described
clearly in mathematical terms. For example, there are interactions
between free electrons by means of photons that result in an
observed repelling force. There are also interactions between the
quarks of a nucleon by means of mesons, interactions between the
neighbouring neutrons or protons, interactions between nucleus and
electrons, and interactions between the atoms of molecules. The
phenomena themselves -the nucleon, the nucleus, the atom, the
molecule- are sufficiently described by these interactions, meaning
by the respective equations, which implies that interactions and
phenomena are interchangeable terms. Interestingly, the
interrelations of quantum physics do not describe actual existence.
Instead they predict the potential for existence. A manifest
particle, such as an electron, cannot be described in terms of
classical mechanics. It exists as a multitude of superposed
"scenarios", of which one or another manifests only when it is
observed, i.e. upon measurement. Therefore, matter does not
inherently exist. It exists only as interrelations of "empty"
phenomena whose properties are determined by observation. This is
the fourth manifestation of emptiness at the subtle level of
matter.
Regarding mathematics:
In the ancient Indian context, the number zero did not
originally refer to nothingness or nullity. The Sanskrit word for
zero is shunya, which means "puffed up, hollow, empty." The zero
stands for emptiness suggestive of potentiality. The discovery of
the mathematical zero concurred with the emptiness of
prajna-intuition in India around 200 BC. Both signify polar
opposition between being and nonbeing. Zero is that which contains
all possible polarised pairs such as (+1, -1), (+2, -2), etc. It is
the collection of all mutually cancelling pairs of forward and
backward movements. Put it another way, zero is fundamental to all
existence. Because of it, everything is possible. Zero is the
additive identity, the focal point of all numbers; without it,
numbers cannot be created. India alone, among the great
civilisations of antiquity, was able to fathom the depth of
emptiness and willing to accept its consequences in
mathematics.
Following the introduction of the Hindu-Arabic numerals into
Western culture, zero became a number that was used in calculations
like any other number. Consequently, it lost some part of its
original meaning, namely the part that suggests potentiality.
Today, most mathematicians do not associate the notion of emptiness
with zero, but with the empty set, which is a construct of set
theory. A set is a collection of objects or numbers. For example,
the set { 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 } is a set of numbers containing five
elements; it is therefore said to have the "cardinality" of 5. The
empty set { } is a collection that contains nothing and has the
cardinality 0. The mathematician John von Neumann (1923) invented a
method, known as von Neumann hierarchy, which can be employed to
generate the natural numbers from the empty set as follows:
