Numbers are odd: They take hidden trend lines, or a myriad of half glances little events, and gather them togther in a single create crunched statics - a number for all to see. a number that becomes an even in its own right.
A number that represent a quite distinct mental process. This is not conjunction or synthetics so much as dissolution and resolution. Events are in numbers turned into dissolved into a numerical paste a tic in a box, a thing counted: That glue is the poured into the number- into the bald figure. This figure then exist as a hard point or facts in its own right. It becomes then part in a set of other numbers other facts, which together create the framework of a world of understanding. Understanding then flits across the facts, drawing them his way or that - inhabiting them as a world - or indeed several world as the same facts might mean so very many different things - might open out into differing worlds and patterns.
more than that the world described by these numbers, need to reflect in some gentle way the 'real world' - by which we of course mean our verbal understanding (itself semi-abstract) or the world we regularly inhabit We look to these numbers to comment then on what we are and how we are.
Indeed we go further- the numbers are evidence of our believes about he world. they are what allows abstract mental construction to feel as if they were real and of the world - or else the challenge that world and pull it of its axis. a single figure and even better a mirage of numbers can then be dangerous. Well of course they would be is i were not possible to ensure that the paste one makes, and the number world fashioned reflect a certain view point. After all what the paste is depends on the question asked....
Well to a certain degree anyway. Numbers in fact impose an threefold hurdle on prejudice. Firstly there are established ways to paste reality. One cannot then simply do it any which way - cannot dissolve in the interests of prejudice.
Secondly Statistics clearly create a sword of Damonclese over their would be users. numbers create create ended terriorities that might be used in many ways or forms. Individuals will then always choose the exact path through the number world they use - what we currently call spin but other have called interpretation or narrative. And yet you will always be judged by the path you take - by where you go. Other paths are always possible and can always be seen by those with eyes to judge. numbers are then dangerous tin that they create an interpretive plain with many lines and believes are articulated one against the other.
Finally numbers are quirky and surreal. They have then their greatest power as numbers when they are given their head and allowed to redescribe belief in someway - opening paths not otherwise seen. Numbers then in setting up things to count actually create new unlooked places to pitch belief, new journies in this world. And over stodgy imposition of truth and the figures that prove it, is then likely to flounder as other statistics create other angles unlooked initially, and yet often more telling.
Numbers then create meaning if forming a shadow kingdom- like and yet unlike our won: The surreal world of knowledge - one enters at ones own peril- for it is never clear that one master it and its trendns or patterns.
but enter it of course one must.
Fort his domain of numbers clearly dominates modern life - and does from several angles:
Firstly, democracy is also founded on a number game. What else is democracy but a counting exercise?numbers then animate what we call our freedom. Politics likewise lives and dies but the numbers. the statistics then one uses in poltics are designed t reflect that other great statistic votes: Peoples (squeezed middles or the middle classes) and then conjured up, in the hope that the numbers involved in the conjuring, the individuals so pasted into a figure will eventually reflect in vote. Numbers create then also the inner dynamic for democracy: A world where numbers on the one hand and on the other are meant to be drawn together.
Likewise business clearly works at the junucture of three numbers games; Profit production and sales. In this case of course these streams are not images of each other other much as complex pairs: effect one element in the process and one of the others is effected. Profit increases when production decreases etc. Behind all such couples there lies of course the dominance of the profit figure. as long as that keeps on rising everything is ok. The world of sales is then in a sense atomized by profit. it does into really matter what is sold or how or when as long as that figure keeps on rising (and to a different degree so is production_), There is a real hierarchy here therefore- a real pattern: one figure defines the others- and what can be one. Number streams impose hierachies.
Or again there are the figures used in public policy: figures that pull individual needs of in the direction of the mass. the paste dominates the case - ad the abstract out guns this or that incarnation of the abstract. numbers then allow certain beliefes to be more significant that the storm of passions in the present would wish them to be. It is never simply about oneself, and figures explain why it must not be - or if it is why this might well be a problem.
Numbers the do not merely paste the world and create it anew- but also the very ethic of freedom we espoused is numerical - they are our freedom - our meaning or at least the point that freedom that meaning itself finds its own meaning- where its wheels touch the ground. Truth in numbers is an truisim - as numbers actually a busy creating our world our truth. the battles then for different interpretation of figures are real, for we are fighting over the very way we understand our world our system - and so in a sense the way we understand what of numerical freedom really means...
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