[lit-ideas] Re: Numbers
- From: AT <atri2715@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 01:15:40 -0500
Thanks Robert; I for one need to let all this sink in for a while, reread,
think some more, come at it in a different way, find a new angle, a new
correlative, who knows. I'm not sure what to say really...but let me suggest
this.
Take the number 4, for example. 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.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
