Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Strange Loop



At most, 6 circles can divide a plane into 32 regions: ✡
1+2+3+4 = ▵
At most, 5 circles can divide a plane into 22 regions: ☆
✡ - ▵ = ☆
To ‘calculate’ is a verb derived from the latin word for pebble, calculus, specifically used in reference to a small stone used for counting in ancient times.  And there was once a mathematician-philosopher of antiquity who painted a picture of 32 wondrous paths of wisdom, composed of 10 numbers + 22 letters.  Playing with the shapes of 32, 10 and 22, this anonymous mystic cryptographer partitioned the letters further to echo those figurative patterns, inducing a property of recursion within the architecture of a ‘sacred’ alphabet very closely related to our own.  


But does that make it “true”?