In the book “Odd John,” an evolutionary leap of a child wonders why human beings constructed their number system in units of ten. After all, units of twelve are divisible by {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12} while ten is only divisible by {1, 2, 5, 10}.
Taking this a step further, a base 60 number system is divisible by {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60… and possibly some other numbers I’m too lazy to figure out right now}; but is divisibility the most desirable quality we want in a number system? What the heck do we want in a number system??? I don’t know, I’m not a mathematician. Go ask one, and stop reading this blog.
So I’ll venture a guess: We want a number system that we can count on our fingers. All numbers bigger than this should be multiples of ten, because ten is our base foundation. Thus a Base-10 number system,
Let’s look at my second favorite number, 69 (the first being Phi). The signifier for the nine looks like a fish swimming upward, the signifier for the six a fish swimming downward. There’s something very yin-yang about this number. There is even a fantastic sexual position involving simultaneous reciprocal oral copulation named after it (although one partner always stops to feel (and it’s usually her… thpppt!!!)).
Besides the obvious fact that if we used different symbols to represent the numbers zero through nine, if we were to express this number in a different Base we would have a completely different number. So the number 69…
…in Hexidecimal (base-16) is 45.
…in Duodecimal (base-12) is 59.
…in Sexagesimal (base-60) is 1 3/20.
…in Binary (base-1) is 1000101.
So the Pices fishies disappear, the Yin-Yang resemblance vanishes, and there is certainly nothing even vaguely erotic about 1000101–okay, maybe vaguely.
To think that we were one digit away from a Base-8 number system, the pinky being as useless as it is. If we didn’t need a digit to balance out the symmetry of our hands against the thumb, we’d be working in eights and everyone would consider 4 the mystical number instead of 5.
Or would they? We would still have five limbs, Phi would still be connected to five, and the dodecahedron would still be built out of pentagrams so that we could construct golden rectangles by connecting the center of each face. These things would just be a little harder to see, because we’d be thinking of everything in fours all the time.
And what about people with extra digits?
I wonder if there are any studies about their mathematical aptitudes…
Somebody go conduct one… and get back to me…