Neb: "I'm sorry, I'm just busy right now, with homework and all..." Jesus: "You know, I created those numbers."
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I'm no theologian, but I always thought that the mathematical idea of 'number' was of eternal & unchanging quality; something akin to the "Forms" in Plato. (Pythagoras, I believe, started it.) Anyhow, what I'm getting at is: if you think of 'number' as an idea within the mind of God (are you?), then in what sense can you say that God 'created' number? Do they have 'being-ness'?
Hmmm, this is intriguing. Upon interviewing myself I conclude that, up until this moment in time, my belief has been that 1) numbers are of eternal and unchanging quality, *exactly* like the Platonic forms, and 2) numbers are an idea in the mind of God, and 3) God created numbers. But now that you mention it, I do see some potential conflict betwixt these ideas- if nothing else, an issue of timing- if numbers were created, WHEN were they created? Was there a time, back in the day, when they didn't exist?
I have always imagined the moment when God picked out all the digits of pi as being like a composition of a great cosmic symphony. Which, of course, would imply that pi has not always existed.
I am a retired mathematics graduate student, a craver of beauty, a suitor of wisdom, a lunatic with reason; a poet without verse, writer-want-to-be, musician-wish-I-were, symmetry-loving seeker of the abstract, the elegant, the transcendent, the divine. I love my babies and my husband, good coffee, late night talks with long (and never)-lost friends, watching the sun set from my disheveled balcony, tulips, Rich Mullins, Bob Dylan, U2, Brancusi, Picasso, Chaim Potok, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, designing and not finishing quilts, vacuuming, and Peace.
2 comments:
I'm no theologian, but I always thought that the mathematical idea of 'number' was of eternal & unchanging quality; something akin to the "Forms" in Plato. (Pythagoras, I believe, started it.) Anyhow, what I'm getting at is: if you think of 'number' as an idea within the mind of God (are you?), then in what sense can you say that God 'created' number? Do they have 'being-ness'?
Hmmm, this is intriguing. Upon interviewing myself I conclude that, up until this moment in time, my belief has been that 1) numbers are of eternal and unchanging quality, *exactly* like the Platonic forms, and 2) numbers are an idea in the mind of God, and 3) God created numbers. But now that you mention it, I do see some potential conflict betwixt these ideas- if nothing else, an issue of timing- if numbers were created, WHEN were they created? Was there a time, back in the day, when they didn't exist?
I have always imagined the moment when God picked out all the digits of pi as being like a composition of a great cosmic symphony. Which, of course, would imply that pi has not always existed.
Perhaps I shall ask Someone someday.
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