∞
The invention of the laws of numbers was based on the primitive, already dominant error that some things are equal to other things.
—Nietzsche |
Imagine a number system in which no symbol is repeated and which follows the rule: The complexity of each symbol must increase in proportion to the size of the number it represents. One to nine are more-or-less unchanged. Ten is, say, a triangle; twenty a little drawing of a pyramid; thirty, the monas hieroglyphica of John Dee. In the hundreds, the symbols look like Chinese pictograms; in the thousands, detailed sketches; in the millions, photographs; in the billions, holographs. The further along the number line you travel, the stranger and more complex are the symbols you encounter. At some point they become motile. One is a detailed image of a labyrinth through which rolls a tiny red two-dimensional ball. Another is iridescent and emits an incessant moan. One smells of decayed fruit and delivers small electric shocks. Succeeding these (as the number-line intrudes into reality) are the three-dimensional symbols and the symbols that are alive.
Now I wish to introduce the following idea: at some point in this infinite number-line a symbol will reach a level of complexity that defies duplication and thereby forfeit its utility as a symbol; in other words, at some point the symbols must become inimitable, individual, one-of-a-kind, useless. One number, say, is represented by the atomic structure of a certain bird; another, by a particular tiger. There is a number so vast it cannot be comprehended and the symbol representing it is human. There is a number so vast that, in our number system, it would contain as many digits as there are elementary particles in our galaxy and perhaps, fittingly, our galaxy is the symbol for it. In this system it also follows that the symbol for infinity (to which we assign the pitiful “∞”) is God. If such a system exists, then what 12 or 34 is to me, perhaps I am to another, in whose mind the events of my life are computations and the universe an equation. |