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Maths and God
May. 10th, 2004 09:30 pmThere is an utterly fascinating articel on Telepolis, a German online magazine:
Es geschehen noch Zahlen und Wunder (Helmut Merschmann)
Die Ausstellung "10+5=Gott" im Jüdischen Museum Berlin geht dem
Mysterium der Zahlen nach
I am very sorry they only have that German version of the article. It's about an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, about the magic and mystery of numbers - beginning with the qabbalah, but continued to the most contemporary of maths.
One interesting tidbit I'd like to share with those that don't speak German: as in most numeric systems before the Arabic numbers, the ancient Jewish people used letters for numbers. The name of God, which was forbidden to be wirtten or spoken (as at least everybody knows who's ever watched "The Life of Brian", let alone suffered formal education in this sort of thing) was comprised of letters the numeric value of which was 10 and 5 respectively. So, if you tried to write "15" by writing 10+5 as was to be expected, you'd commit terrible blasphemy. So, people wrote 9+6 instead...
I am very sorry they only have that German version of the article. It's about an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, about the magic and mystery of numbers - beginning with the qabbalah, but continued to the most contemporary of maths.
One interesting tidbit I'd like to share with those that don't speak German: as in most numeric systems before the Arabic numbers, the ancient Jewish people used letters for numbers. The name of God, which was forbidden to be wirtten or spoken (as at least everybody knows who's ever watched "The Life of Brian", let alone suffered formal education in this sort of thing) was comprised of letters the numeric value of which was 10 and 5 respectively. So, if you tried to write "15" by writing 10+5 as was to be expected, you'd commit terrible blasphemy. So, people wrote 9+6 instead...
