Words or numbers? Letters or binary?

Question

Maths. Adding and subtracting. Multiplication. Division. Factors. Equations. It's all quite beautiful, if you're that way inclined.

In the US, Maths is called Math. It is singular. Here in Britain we have many forms of Maths. Across the Atlantic they only have one. I don't know what that says about the disparity between our cultures. It probably says very little, but then again, I'm not a linguist.

Everything nowadays runs on binary. That's just zeroes and ones. Two digits that rule the world.

001100000 0000110000 01100000110 0111111110
001100000 0001111000 01100000110 0110000000
001100000 0011001100 00110001100 0111111110
001100000 0011001100 00110001100 0110000000
001111110 0001111000 00011011000 0110000000
001111110 0000110000 00001110000 0111111110

Yes, Maths is probably the answer to all of life's problems. Man turned to science because he was sick of the ambiguity of art. Art can be anything. That's the whole point of it, apparently. Think of the sleek beauty of binary....everything is either a zero or a one...no shades of grey, no awkward decimals or possibilities. It is beautiful because it is true. I think an artist of some kind once said truth was beauty. He was wrong, but it was a lovely idea. He probably lived before calculators we invented, so we can forgive his human errors.

Think of the ridiculous forms that man has invented in the pursuit of art: ice-dance, mime, synchronised swimming, the saxophone... and so many more. Why? Is it really so vital that we express ourselves. I think the world would probably be a better place with less self-expression. I know this is anathema to western culture, where we're supposed to encourage children to make self-portraits out of clay and tell autistic wrecks that the inky blobs they have drawn is art, but perhaps the world would be a better place with more self-repression.

Remember: Hitler was an amateur artist, not a weekend mathematician.

It would be lovely to think that there was a formula or equation underpinning our existence; that we could guarantee happiness by following a set pattern; that all our spiritual and moral ambiguities could be annihilated with a giant calculator.

Imagine Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, speaking in his booming voice to the Children of Israel. Rather than holding two tablets of stone he clutches in his hands two large CASIO calculators. On both of them is a number of wondrous holy significance.

Sadly, in his hurry to hand the words (or numbers) of God to mankind, Moses is carrying the calculators upside down and the number appears as a word: BOOBIES.

That is where mankind goes wrong. If only we had chosen numbers instead of words. It's numbers that you can count on. Words just take us to the ends of sentences.

Answer 1

Because numbers (Maths) intimadate most of us and letters are more fun - see below!
:-)

At New York's Kennedy Airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, the attorney general said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," a Justice Department spokesman said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes".

Answer 2

Math is not the panacea to all ailments, whether social, physical, psychological, etc. Some things just can't be quantited. Take love, for example. How can you quantify love? Are you going to create a ten-point Likert scale and rate how much you love people on this scale? "Oh, I give my children a 10 and my spouse a 9,...". This is utter nonsense.

Also, math(s) can be "fudged". Think Einstein and the Cosmological Constant. He made a big "booboo" using this in his Theory of General Relativity to make the universe appear as a static universe, when Hubble showed that it is not static, but expanding.

Furthermore, some things that exist can only be explained via probabilities. You cannot know the exactly location of an electron within an atom, only probabilities as to where it might be. Having a 70% probability that it will be in a certain location, doesn't mean that is will be necessarily there. Just more likely than being in the 30% probability location.

Using probabilities still leaves ambiguity. Ergo, ditching words and using math(s) doesn't really make an improvement.

Answer 3

Hey Rabbit, Math in the United States is divided into distinct sub-sections. The class in elementary is called math, but each chapter covers the different categories. Jr. High, I took Algebra, and Geometry, Trig in High School, and binary - in Computer classes. I enjoyed your humor, and don't really find a question here. I do believe that Math is the Key. Trouble is we don't really know what the Key looks like and what it fits. I like to say that in the end, Everything = Nothing, which came from the Big Bang being Nothing which became Everything. But don't ask me to prove it. You posted in Philosophy.

Answer 4

A very fascinating question. I'd have to agree to a small degree. However, I think everyone should have the freedom to choose whether they prefer the words or numbers because different people are suited to different things.

Answer 5

Brain or no brain!