I was talking about numbers the other day, specifically relating to the History of Maths program, and that has rattled around in the old brain-box ever since. A conclusion has been reached; prepare for its sharing.
I was thinking specifically of numbers and their relevance in the real world; we live on numbers, they keep our society running and we base our far-reaching concepts of the Universe upon them... and yet, I almost think that they don't have any relevance to us; I don't think that the Universe could care less that we call the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter 3.141 etc...
To the reality, it just is, as is the speed of light, Planck's constant and any other number of universal truths that simply exist, and our concept of numbers is merely our way of perceiving them.
Other, alien cultures may base all of their numbers, if they have them, upon one of these constants; their understanding of the number 1 may be equal to pi, as far as we're concerned. There could be any number of variations and they may be able to predict the outcomes of complex equations by picturing the fluctuations or conceptualizing the 'numbers' as thoughts, or people, or anything. Just imagine how completely different we would be if we thought of numbers differently...
Oh well, it's about 11 now... time for bed.
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