[lit-ideas] Re: Numbers
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:59:14 -0600
AT wrote:
. . . . A child who learns about numbers learns that
seeing 4 marbles, 4 gummi bears, 4 sticks (put close together), signifies
something similar. It is the idea of "4"--something present neither in sticks, gummi bears or marbles, yet something exemplified and made present by the instantiantion, in front of the child's eyes, of 4 things arranged close together. Initially the idea of number is the idea of 4 objects, recalled at will. The objects themselves recede from importance and later only the idea remains. But what actually remains? Whatever remains is perhaps what a number is.
We typically don't say the same thing about four BLUE objects; we don't
say that "blue" is not present "in" the marbles. So why is "4" not
present in the marbles? We see they are blue; we see that there are 4
of them. Or is "blue" like "4," not in the world but only an
abstraction in the mind?
The only thing that remains residually after all objects disappear is
something that we can describe as: "the memory of 4 objects" or better even,
"the memory of 4 presences". Finally, "presence" itself, recalled. This
recalling of "presence" is indeed a mental state, but it would have been
impossible without an original actual presence. And so, numbers, as mental
states, do retain a vestigial link to the objective world of objects, and
presence, and would be impossible to conceptualize without a memory of the
world. The world is necessary for numbers to exist, but only vestigially, in
memory. To recall a number is to remember presence, and the number is the
memory of presence itself, details forgotten or erased.
That, I think, is what a number is--a kind of memory, and so, a kind of
abstract link to the world. And so, only a living person could understand what
a number is, for it is something "inside". I don't know if this explains
anything. I need to stop, and confess further ignorance. This discussion has
brought me very close to Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry' and Derrida's preface
to it, to which I further defer...
Thanks for engaging, Robert--
Alex Trifan/ Boston
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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