Numbers

by

The Language of the Universe?

In the beginning was the Word?

Many say the language of the universe is mathematics, but the language of mathematics is not necessarily numbers. Numbers are a shorthand for words. In quantum mechanics collapsed waveforms is the term for a relationship between particles and their waveforms, in which particles, or indeed any combination of particles (atoms, molecules, chemical and organic compounds, even you) are seen as the focus or point of action of the energy waves involved. In the same way numbers and equations are like the collapsed waveforms of the huge quantity of words that might otherwise be needed to describe them. It is a good analogy. For many mathematical concepts the number of words would be as infinite as the cosmic extent of particle waveforms.

Pi (π), the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, is one such mathematical concept. Written as a decimal it extends to an infinite number of decimal places, of which the first thirty two are as below:

3.14159265358979323846264338327950…

Should you have any need to remember this, some time ago I came across a mnemonic for the first dozen or so places. I changed and extended it to thirty-two before getting bored. The number of letters in each word is the number at each decimal place.

Now –
I sing a scale excelling,
in mystic voice and magic spelling,
sublimest strains incarnate.

Art in its measures will reveal
an angel’s song for the carousel,
and in eternal harmonies dwell,
O!

Feel free to add more of your own.

The idea of numbers being a shorthand for words is not a difficult concept, after all without words how could we explain what numbers are to children? But there may be more to them than that. Pi is far more than the simple relationship of a circle to its diameter.

Pi

Are numbers and equations
the collapsed waveforms of words?
And is pi’s definition
the circling of the birds
round and wide above the hills?
or the volume of a drop of water from the rills
rolling down to plop into shining highland ghylls?

Then the circle of the sphere
and the rolling of a tear
when a sobbing child cries, ‘Why!’
and the Earth around the Sun in perihelion,
and the wide, wide width of tears is pi.

The quick birds’ wheeling cry,
and the crying tears of pain,
and the earth around the sun,
and the round drops in the rain,
and the signs of endless sky,
the music of the spheres,
and the circle of the years,
tell us why.

Birds circling round their prey
know the distance from their nest,
and swooping down from sky,
sharp claw and shining eye,
returning straight and high,
the circle and the swoop,
the short returning loop,
and the gather of the storm
round the centre still at rest
say more to you and I
than the radius and the circle
that are pi.

by

All the Time in the World

Linespace

Concerning time we tend to ask,
(though feeling slightly foolish)
‘If time began with the Big Bang,
what happened before then?’
before when there was no before,
when there was not a when,

a question in a circle,
a circle in a round
when never was was never found
nor ever was again.
…

We are growing old together,
we two, the world and I.
and we often talk together
as I lie in the heather
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.

‘If time began with the Big Bang,
there must be something other.’

We both were born so very young,
we two, the world and I,
when time was nothing to be found,
except we heard a bugle sound
to live or die.

In these purple heather flowers
the minutes turn to hours
and the passing of the clouds
is passing time.
…

Concerning space we tend to ask
(though feeling slightly foolish)
‘If space began with the Big Bang,
with what beyond did it compare?
beyond where there is no beyond,
where there is not a where?

a question in a circle,
a circle in a round
where nothing there is ever found
nor ever will be there.
…

We are growing old together,
we two, the world and I.
and we often talk together
as I lie in the heather
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.

‘If space began with the Big Bang,
there must be something other.’

We both were born so very small,
we two, the world and I,
when there was nothing else at all,
except we heard a bugle call
to live or die.

In these purple heather flowers
the sky and space are ours
and the passing of the clouds
is far away.
…

Spacetime began with the Big Bang,
with no before or any where.
There must be something other.
Other than the world and I,
Other than the clouds and sky,
Other than the words we choose,
Other than the facts we use,
Other in the most extreme,
Other than all other.

Could that Other that is other
than this universe be nothing?
No time? No space? No thing?
A song we cannot sing?

We cannot think of nothing,
but we think of nothing less,
a void, an emptiness.
An emptiness in what?
So we look for something else,
for something Other.

We lie here in the heather,
we two, the world and I.
and we talk again together
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.

In the heather banks of spacetime,
in the flower bells of space,
tiny quanta flicker and tiny quanta chase,
ghosts of Might and Might Not,
ethereal as lace.
…

We two, the world and I, are lost in idle chatter.
Matter in our cosmos has mirrored anti-matter.
Is the Other anti-universe?
The Other in the Looking Glass,
converse of our own converse?
Has it mind? And does it matter?

Matter and anti-matter
annihilate each other,
What would become of spacetime?
No more us and no more Other?
No-thing, no where, no when,
questions in a circle, circles in a round,
where never was was never found,
nor ever was again.

We lie here in the heather,
we two, the world and I,
and we talk again together
and ponder altogether
just what it is to die.

We cannot think of nothing,
but we think of nothing less,
we look in an abyss, into an emptiness.
Asking emptiness in what?
always wanting something else,
something Other.
…

We two, the world and I,
have much to take and give.
We two were born a single kind
The world is home for humankind.
It is our home, we are its mind
we much search and we must find
just what it is to live.

We’re conscious here, why not the Other?
Years of searching, years of dreams,
for others here found nothing more.
Are we rarer than it seems?
Are we alone?

Mitochondrial DNA
has one root through all the Earth.
Cells of mosses and of trees,
spiders, antelopes and fleas,
the lion and the lamb, all these,
the fossil and the newborn babe
are each other’s families.

Only once was life’s seed sown,
in this dear Earth we call our own.
Once in this land and all its seas,
once in four-plus billion years,
with so slim chance are we alone?
…

We two, the world and I,
have much to give and take.
we lie and talk together
and still we wonder whether
If conscious mind is scarce to find,
what chance is there in Other?
Does it know? Is it awake?

Here the chance of consciousness
is cut by the click and chime,
of fourteen billion years or less,
but Other has all time.

Infinite is far without end.
Eternal, an ageless when.
If far is as far as the dice are cast,
and an age is as long as spacetime lasts,
and when all time and space is past,
the Other is beyond then.

More than ‘eternal’ and ‘infinite’,
Unbound by time and space
pervading here and now,
in every time and place,
distance, seconds, years, alike,
our world is a treasured seed
Other has all the room in the world,
Other has all the time it needs
to nurture and to weed.
…

We lie here in the heather,
we two, the world and I.
and we talk again together
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.
And the sheep go grazing yonder,
while the world and I still ponder
how the bush that flamed with wonder
could speak in tones of thunder,

‘I AM what I AM.’