The Binary System We are so completely surrounded by decimal numbers that most people believe humans were built to count in base ten: we have ten fingers, you know.The binary system is assumed to be something very modern, recently inventedfor constructing all these wonderful windows-peecees and portable mp3 players. Whenever capitalists give you ones and zeros in TV advertisements,they want you to forget the past and start drooling at some new futuristicdevice instead. I dare to totally disagree. I am quite convinced that humans counted in the binary base long before anyone got the idea of using their fingers (or toes)to indicate numerical measures. Just take a look at the languages of somestone-age peoples still living today. Some of them have very rudimentarynumber systems that only have words for one and two. Some dont have any numbers at all, but even they tend to have at least a word that meansdouble or two similar things. The differentiation between one and two is maybe the oldest mathematical concept known to mankind. Most of the things in the human body are either single or double. Humans need to be in pairs to reproduce. The human mind also seems to love dualistic associations to all kinds of things: good/bad,bright/dark, friend/enemy, masculine/feminine, et cetera. Many cultures have very strong relationships to the number two. Two is theperfect number, and everything must come in pairs in order to stay intact.Odd numbers bring bad luck because they cant be divided in two equalhalves. If twins are born, they are considered sacred, more perfect than their non-doubled tribemates.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 10:55:06 +0000
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