On 3 February 2015 at 13:09, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> LizR wrote: > >> I think English, French, German all start composite numbers around 13? >> (Maybe a Christian influence?) >> I'm not sure you can deduce base 2 from "half-eyed" etc. And I imagine 5 >> was given a different design because it makes a full hand, so to speak. >> I imagine types of music that evolved would require some analysis of how >> it can be made, primitively? I guess everyone recognises that notes an >> octave apart sound "similar" (unfortunately we can't check if that's also >> true for colours - yet). Hm. >> > > > Maybe because base 12 is more sensible than base 10? The Babylonians, who > had something to do with our numeral system, worked in base 60. Which is > why we have 360 degrees in a circle, etc. > > That's a damn good point. So the fact that the teens start after 12 is a sort of tacit admission that base 12 is more convenient (as I suppose are things like eggs coming in dozens - not to mention "six of one, half a dozen of the other" "six of the best" etc). Maybe the authors of the Christian story took that on board, rather than vice versa. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
