A number is a representation of an imaginary relationship of a person to reality for the purpose of its organization and understanding. Numbers help us to reflect the environment and allow us to communicate with it, create it and at the same time deconstruct it.

 

The discovery that vibrating strings, whose lengths express simple numerical relationships, produce pleasantly sounding chords led to the formulation of the concept of harmony and was a step towards the mathematical approach to the world. To the fact that every form can be expressed by numbers, that numbers are hidden in all phenomena. One can see them only after their thorough analysis.

 

There are, by the way, languages in which only five or six numbers are needed and then simply the word “much” follows.

 

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege, the founder of modern philosophical quantification logic and semantic analysis of language, basically the predecessor of analytical philosophy said approximately this: “If I point to an army in the field and ask: How many?, the only logical answer is: How many of what? I can say 12 000, 50 or 2, depending on whether I'm counting men, companies or divisions. In other words, the answer is indeterminate unless I specify the term according to which it should be counted. Is therefore the number a property of the term?” Probably yes, the number is a property of the term, the division has 6 000 soldiers, the property of the term division is 6 000, but the term “division” is a social construct, it is the result of a semiotic language convention.

 

The Warsaw Pact divisions had a different number of men than the NATO divisions. And here everything becomes completely relative.

 

But there is also another interpretation, nonrelativistic, according to which numbers are "ancient principles", "divine archetypes". According to Pythagoras, number is the key to understanding the laws of the cosmos. It is a symbol of the arrangement of the universe. According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, this number is 42.

 

So I do not know. Maybe this 21st edition of 4 Elements will explain it once and for all.

 

As you can see, dear readers, when we play games with numbers, their endings are often completely unpredictable.

 

 

Martin Ciel