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Number Quotes

Browse 65 quotes about Number.

Number Quotes

“4.19. Dedekind's approach is a singular combination of Descartes' Cogito and the idea of the idea in Spinoza. The starting point is the very space of the Cogito, as 'closed' configuration of all possible thoughts, existential point of pure thought. It is claimed (but only the Cogito assures us of this) that something like the set of all my possible thoughts exists. From Spinoza's causal 'serialism' (regardless of whether or not he figured in Dedekind's historical sources) are taken both the existence of a parallelism' which allows us to identify simple ideas by way of their object (Spinoza says: through the body of which the idea is an idea), and the existence of a reflexive redoubling, which secures the existence of 'complex' ideas, whose object is no longer a body, but another idea. For Spinoza, as for Dedekind, this process of reflexive redoubling must go to infinity. An idea of an idea (or the thought of a thought of an object) is an idea. So there exists an idea of the idea of a body, and so on.”

“You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.”

“If we divide the second, every fraction becomes the past faster than the speed of thought and every fraction of every fraction. We would need to step down to the Zero Point of time to measure the present; we would need to divide the smallest number by the infinite number of numbers and look for the past in the infinity of the second. The whole matter is smaller than the numberless “number” of infinity. Infinity is endless.”

“In The Quantified Society, I explore why we measure so much and what this does to us, individually and as a society. I discuss unwanted side effects, such as a blind belief in the objectivity of numbers, but also measurement’s ability to help us focus our attention on something important.”