First published on my now defunct FB page on Wednesday, 19 April 2017 at 13:34 UTC+04
Numbers are an integral part of nature. The fact that humans and animals have a countable number of fingers that they have access to and that much of the early interaction of a child developing in this world is interacting with things that can be enumerated tells us that numbers are not a ‘man made’ invention to make sense of the world/universe around them, but in fact, are very much a part of the fabric of the universe itself. Yet another way the intuition of wanting to count comes from simply looking at the night sky and wanting to give ‘value’ or ‘quantify’ the amount of stars one looks at … makes one want to count stuff. So, having said that, I establish a notion that numbers and the universe aren’t two separate entities but integral to each other… beyond the ‘innovations’ of man’s intellect. When counting, one can count in any base they like. Various cultures throughout the centuries have used a varied number of ways to ‘count’ and ‘represent’ their counting. Whether it be in base 12, base 60, base 10, base 3, base 2 or even base 120. For more on what ‘bases’ mean, please use uncle-google and then aunty-wikipedia’s source of wisdom to arrive at the understanding of bases. Good, now that you understand what bases are… let’s continue with our discussion on Prime Numbers. You see, the human brain (and I would also assume any kind of brain) is a finely tuned pattern matching engine. We can detect patterns very easily and it’s this ability to detect patterns that allows us to memorize symbols, remember people’s faces, classify objects (cats, dogs, lions, mountains, trees, children, balls, birds etc.. )So in spite of the fact that two birds look completely different, our brains have absolutely no problem in classifying both as birds. This pattern matching ability is innate to most of us. In probably highly rare scenarios does someone have an affliction that denies him/her the ability to conduct such mental tasks. And it’s not surprising that this pattern matching ability then therefore also extends to us figuring out patterns in numbers. Numbers that, we have already talked about being innately linked to nature. Keeping all this in mind, let’s try to see how numbers work. Numbers follow a stringent set of rules. Rules set by the numbers themselves. Which, then means, rules set by nature itself on how the numbers need to work. And us humans, in our common union of attack, have figured out quite a lot about numbers. How they behave, what they do, when they do what they do, how to control them, how to find more of them, how to write succint formulas that then generate numbers of various forms and shapes. To make things now, easier: If I wanted to find out the 100th number that’s a multiple of 5. All I do is say 100 x 5. A simple mathematical operation that would get there. We can find the 50th fibonacci number, we can find the 75th even number or the 1025th ‘perfect’ number and so on and so forth. And for 99.999999 percent of the numbers, we kind of have a very good idea of how they work and when they appear while counting. Except, Prime Numbers. What are Prime numbers? Prime numbers are numbers that can only be divided by 1 and themselve. Example, 17 is a number that cannot be divided wholly by any other number… except 1 and 17. But, 18 is a number that can be divided by 2,3,6 and 9. A very beautiful mathematical proof also proves that ALL the numbers of the universe up to infinity can be generated only using Prime Numbers! So prime numbers, so to speak are the building blocks of all numbers. Hence, by that logic, prime numbers are the building blocks of the universe (of nature and the physical realm we live in). But, there’s just one tiny little problem with prime numbers. They do not follow ANY rules! We have come very close to observing their behaviors, but they always figure out ways to confuse us. We have absolutely no understanding of when, how and why prime numbers occur when they occur. And it kind of seems that it will stay that way for quite a long time to come. So even though they’re so abstract, random and rebelious, they form the building blocks of all other numbers. And, lastly, without prime numbers, we wouldn’t at the moment have secure encryption algorithms. So, all in all, makes you want to believe in God! 🙂