Are numbers real or illusory?

[Kaickul]

People obviously hold firm ideas about what numbers are and what they mean. They appear to be highly useful.

Please share your ideas about 'what are numbers?'.

Are numbers real objects?

Are numbers essentially relationships?

Is a number a thing, or a process, function or system itself (perhaps a well defined subsystem in a known construct like mathematics)?

Could numbers represent a function available to our minds only to help organize the world around us? If so, then why are they so apparently useful?

 

[vilk]

Could numbers represent a function available to our minds only to help organize the world around us? If so, then why are they so apparently useful?

Didn't you just answer your own question?

 

[Dan_Vacant]

They are like words, made up sounds people made to represent things.
The number is made up, what it represents is real. So they're symbols.

 

[AugmentedFourth]

Well, to be clear, we have to separate what we are talking about by "numbers". Clearly, in some form numbers are just human constructs (e.g. decimal system, written representation).

However, that doesn't mean that they represent something illusory, made-up, constructed, etc. like words do.

The universe has inherent qualities that define very 'special' things, for example, the number e.

e is CLEARLY a very special number, it has very unique properties that pin it in a central role in many physical or larger-scale processes that go on in the universe.
In calculus we notice that it has many unique number theoretical properties... and then it seems to show up everywhere in nature, whatever that means.....

Likewise, many of the mathematical formulations in physics seem to be very elegant (as in relatively simple and non-obfuscated) and yet describe the universe's behavior VERY accurately.

Then again, while 6.626x10^-34 may be Planck's constant, ultimately this is in a system of arbitrary units, (like all unitary systems) namely, 6.626x10^-34 J*s.
We can then easily define the constant as one. Just as easily as we can define any quantity as one.

So this shows that numbers do exist in a physical sense, but only in relation between quantities. I.e. everything is relative, almost like an extension of Mach's principle.

Then again, these could all just be really really elegant really really close...

...approximations. D=

 

[wat]

Sure they are real, at least in some sense. The fact that various quantities of different types of subatomic particles are required for different types of atoms to exist pretty much confirms it, at least for me.

But when someone says they aren't I don't think they are quite wrong because I think our(humanity's) definitions for "real" and "illusory" up to this point may be due for some refinement. Maybe there is no absolute definiton of each. Or maybe all things from objects in our surroundings to comic book characters all exist at varying degrees of "realness"

 

[Eric Christian]

People obviously hold firm ideas about what numbers are and what they mean. They appear to be highly useful.

Please share your ideas about 'what are numbers?'.

Are numbers real objects?

Are numbers essentially relationships?

Is a number a thing, or a process, function or system itself (perhaps a well defined subsystem in a known construct like mathematics)?

Could numbers represent a function available to our minds only to help organize the world around us? If so, then why are they so apparently useful?

There are number patterns that appear in living creature that I find strange. Why does most everything have 2 eyes, two nostrils and one mouth? Whats up with 5 fingers and 5 toes?

Also, regarding numbers I think we should go to metric time and have a metric calendar as well. 20 hour days, 100 minutes to an hour and 100 seconds in a minute.

 

[Nile]

There are number patterns that appear in living creature that I find strange. Why does most everything have 2 eyes, two nostrils and one mouth? Whats up with 5 fingers and 5 toes?

It is what worked out best.

 

[abandonist]

Highdeas!

 

[acrcmb]

Yeah numbers aren't really real in the traditional sense your talking they just represent real things just like someone said their just like words, the patterns in nature aren't a coindence theres a reason why each creature has those traits all to do with their body type and role in the food chain, for example two eyes allow for better depth perception etc

 

[Eric Christian]

Yeah numbers aren't really real in the traditional sense your talking they just represent real things just like someone said their just like words, the patterns in nature aren't a coindence theres a reason why each creature has those traits all to do with their body type and role in the food chain, for example two eyes allow for better depth perception etc

Three eyes would probably be even better though right? You want to see something crazy look at a Dragonfly wing under a microscope.

 

[Matthew]

Numbers themselves are only ideas, therefore they are not real in a tangible sense. The argument could be made that the electric signals without our brains representing thought of numbers brings an abstract concept into reality, but that's for the recreational drug use crowd to decide.

The relationships that numbers describe, however, are very real.

 

[Ill-Gotten James]

If I am correct, a number is a unit of measurement. It is transcribed via a symbol. For example: two = 2. But two can also be written as II. Both 2 and II are symbols, but each symbol represents the same unit of measurement.

 

[mlp187]

My answer is i.

 

[devolutionary]

Define "real" to my satisfaction and maybe I'll address the rest of the question.

 

[bhakan]

Three eyes would probably be even better though right? You want to see something crazy look at a Dragonfly wing under a microscope.

I believe it is because a lot of the the creatures with 2 eyes, 1 mouth, 5 digits, etc. share a common (but really distant) ancestor which had those quantities. There could have been a 3 eyed creature with a superior range of vision, but inferior in some other more important way, so it died where as the 2 eyed one lived and ended up as many of the creatures we see today.

 

[Joose]

I feel like I should be stoned before genuinely replying to this one.

 

[abandonist]

Aren't plants just... like... weird, man?

 

[Vhyle]

Why is it always called a PAIR of panties, when there is only one bra?

 

[abandonist]

Actually, that's a colloquialism from way back that never went away.

BOOM

 

[MythicSquirrel]

If you put your finger in your butt. Did you really put your finger in your butt or did it teleport to an alternate dimension?