Friday, February 08, 2013

Prime number humour

Largest Prime Number Discovered; People Excited By Prime-Number News Still AWOL | Vanity Fair

The most interesting thing about the story is how odd it sounds to say that numbers are "discovered".   Yes, there's a whole Platonic world of new and exciting, um, mental things out there just waiting to be found.

3 comments:

TimT said...

Look at all these primes. I'm quite taken by 'Good Primes' and 'Happy Primes' (or 'Happy numbers that are prime', thanks for that definition mathematicians).

Steve said...

That's an odd list of terms for different primes, isn't it?

On a slightly related idea, Feynman and Wheller's "one electron universe" idea was that you could envisage that all electrons in the universe were the same electron.

Could it be that you can argue that all numbers are the number "1", propagating itself through mental space.

I feel an urge to adopt the lotus position and chant "ommmmmm" now.

Steve said...

Wheeler, not Wheller.