Posted by jonvon on August 03, 2002 at 16:32:39:
In Reply to: numbers and gender, what about numbers and color? what about synaesthesia? posted by synaesthesiaboy on August 03, 2002 at 11:24:17:
well i didn't want to admit it, but if i think about numbers individually i can easily assign them gender. the number 3 is automatically female. the same whatever-it-is in my brain that helps me make poetry is the thing that wants to intuitively assign certain qualities to practically anything. i think i'm right all the time whenever i do this. i'm not sure i can define "right" in this instance. i just feel something is true, and it is. and it usually stays true for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. but at the same time i'm hesitant to say that for everyone else, or in a definite universal sense that numbers have or can be assigned gender. when i back away and think that numbers can describe things like shapes or complex systems, i think that its really numbers working in concert together that describe things that can be assigned things like color and gender. the example of the woman saying that F natural is always red for her, that is interesting. that's kinda like saying that a particular number can be assigned to something like maybe gender. but then a sound, a note, that's a frequency. it can be described by one number assigned to the top of the wave form, another number that is the bottom of the wave, and then another describing the distance between the top and bottom, and then another describing the length of time it takes for the top to go to the bottom and then to the top again. well, i'm not a sound engineer, but i imagine it would be something like that. so, assigning characteristics to numbers is a bit like assigning characteristics to atoms. you can create all kinds of different molecules, proteins or whatever, with atoms. and even atoms get broken down into smaller things. to me, numbers are sort of pure abstractions until they come together to describe something. the more the thing they are describing begins to take shape, the more characteristics suddenly appear. but the poet in me still wants to say that 3 is female. i do not know why.
:
: Kat asks: Do You Think Numbers Have Gender?
: Corey says: i wouldn't be a number freak if i didn't think they had personalities.
: Well, so far, a few of you have gone here. I just want to remind you all of you pro-numbers-having-gender-folks aboutsynaesthesia. It's the most interesting thing. Seriously.