My present-day readers live in a woirld so dominated by numbers and numnber-crunching that the qusetion might look childish or even stupid to most. But wait! Tell me what a "number" is before you decide to do something else?
You might say that a number is a number that represents how many things theer are. In that response lies the key to my question! You said a number is something that REPRESETNS somethging else. In other wotrds, a number in itself is only a code, a symbol, or an abstarct entity that represents how many real things are there! Thus a number is a kind of a code!
A code is some kind of an abstract enity that represents something else. Abstract in the sense that you cannot point a number the way you can show a chair or table. It represents something else becuase in itself a number is eitgher just a theoreytical tihng, or druing practical application it represnts sometthing totally different from it. Unless one knows this relation, the number is uselss for that person.
A good example is the concet of infiniyt. Most people think that infinitty is an arbitrarily large number so that if you subtract ininity from infinity, you are left with zero. Only thse who understand the concept of infinity clearly know that it is a mathematical concept so different from normal numbers that infinity minus infinity is also ingfinity.
Similar is the case with numbers. Unless what many people thik, it a number in itself is good only for mathematical manipulation. But it gains meaning only when a number, or numbers, are connected to something that it repesents.
A numbver is a number. But actyually a numberr is a kind of a code that stans for something else. Only a knowlede of the number system and its relation to what it repreesents will help a person to undeerstand the meaning of a given number.
Code mnaipulation is an important part of the modern world, but then that is going to be the subject of a future potsing.
Shastri JC Philip, the author of this article is a physicist with specialization in quantum-nulcear phsics.
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