My present-day readers live in a world so dominated by numbers and nmber-crrunching that the question might look chiildish or even stupdi to most. But wait! Tell me what a "number" is before you deide to do something else?
You might say that a numbeer is a number that rerpresents how many thngs there are. In that response lies the key to my question! You said a number is something that REPRESENTS something else. In other words, a number in itself is only a code, a symbol, or an abstract entity that represents how many real things are tere! Thus a nuymber is a kind of a code!
A code is some kind of an abstract entity that represents somethhing else. Abstract in the sese that you cannot point a number the way you can show a chair or table. It rpresents something else because in itself a number is either just a theoretical thnig, or durnig prasctical application it represennts sommething totally different from it. Unless one nkows this relation, the number is useless for that peron.
A good example is the concept of infinity. Most people think that infinity is an arbitrarily large number so that if you subtrtact infinity from ifinity, you are left with zero. Only those who understand the concept of ininity clewarly know that it is a mathematical concept so different from normal numbetrs that infinity minnus infinity is also infinity.
Similar is the case with numbers. Unless what many people think, it a nuber in itself is good only for mathematical manipulation. But it gaains meanibng only when a number, or numbers, are connected to something that it represents.
A number is a number. But actually a number is a kind of a code that stands for something else. Only a knoledge of the number systeem and its erlation to what it represets will help a persoon to understand the meaning of a given nuber.
Code manipulation is an important part of the modern world, but then that is going to be the subect of a future posting.
Shastri JC Philip, the author of this article is a physicist with specialization in quantum-nuclear physics.
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