Symbolism and Numbers

Thinking of numbers as symbols that represent meanings other than tallying items involves primarily two kinds of notions of number.  

One notion being the sequential nature of numbers and how the growth from 1 to a larger number might be related to creation of some sort. Many creation myths use numbers to represent various stages of a creation story.  A relatively familiar pattern of meanings of number as they may be applied in this sense follows.

• 1 as a whole.  The world as a complete unity.   Singularity. There is no differentiation, no distinguishing between objects, no distinction between onself and others, in fact, no idea of others.  All is accessable everywhere.
• 2 as a duality.  Differentiantion emerges.   Opposites develop, such as male/female, energy/matter,  positive/negative, light/dark, external/internal, self/others, etc.
• 3 emerges from interaction of opposites.  The idea of 3 may represent something that is created from two opposites like a child from male/female or a system that embodies the duality as a harmonious condition.
• Many myths and world views may use 4 to symbolize the earth (via the 4 directions of north,south,east,west) and thus represent matter or the substance of the world. 
• As can be expected as the numbers progress meanings begin to diverge with the various cultures, myths, world views and representations hence further research is advised for those interested.

Another notion of numbers may be arrived at by observing the way numbers seem to recur in various aspects of the world.  For example,  many cultures observed that there was 12 to 13 moon cycles in a year.   The number 12 became symbolic of a complete cycle and 13 symbolic in some cases as an excess.  Some of these cultures would count the excess as festival days (holidays), which were out of time.  Other cultures would treat the excess days as unfavorable (Mayan) and advised not to do anything during those days.

Some of the early Greek philosophers emphasized the symbolic aspect of number.  The Pythagorean's school of thought related the properties of number and geometry to meanings that were thought to exist independently of the thinker.  The 5 'Platonic solids', 3 dimensional shapes that have equal sides and equal angles, were thought to be the representation of the 4 elements, earth, air, water and fire.  These elements were then thought by some schools of thought to comprise the basic building blocks of matter.  The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron was representative of the universe in that it was composed of 12 pentagons, each pentagon representing a month or sign of the zodiac. See the following site for a more information about the Platonic solids  Virtual Polyhedral

View VRML2.0 solids

Number and geometry symbolized ideas that existed in a world apart from matter.  The access to the objects in this world was via thought.   The objects of this world were perfect in much the same way that a perfect cube or icosehedran cannot be readily seen in the world, but only approached. 

The Platonic school of thought extended this world of pure idea to include such notions as truth, justice, beauty, freedom, etc.  To the Platonists, these ideas were perfect in much the same way the the platonic solids were perfect and were approached, but seldom reached in the world of everyday life. 

The Aristotelean school of thought further populated the world of idea, to include basic forms of the various species of life that were known to exist at that time.  Thus there were logical templates of a horse, for example, and the horses seen in the material world were considered as shadows of the eternal idea of a horse that existed in the world of these forms.

The Greek philosophical schools of thought mentioned above used number to represent a permanent, non-changing world.  Socrates thought and taught that people already knew geometry, mathematics and logical relationships.  It was that people 'forgot' them and a discussion of logical inquiry could help people remember. 

The Chinese culture used number to symbolize a constantly changing world. see base2.   In the Chinese symbolic world, the Hexagrams (composed of two trigrams) were representative of phases of energy.  Knowlege gained from understanding how the phases of energy interact with each other could help a person navigate a course on the sea of life.

For more information of the various Greek philosophical systems see The Perseus Project and choose the text option to view the various texts or search the sie.  The I-Ching (ancient Chinese text) provides explanations of the various Hexagrams and their interactions.

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Last update on 01/26/98

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