September 16, 1998

A Numerical Beginning

Many, many, many, many, many years ago, there was a caveman named Ug. Ug collected rocks. Now, ten caves down from Ug's, Ug Ug lived. He too had a rock collection.

One day, Ug and Ug Ug got into an argument. They wanted to know who had the biggest rock collection, but rocks are heavy and they couldn't carry them all to compare the two collections side by side. So, they got another neighbor, Ug Ug Ug, to be the judge.

Ug Ug Ug ran back and forth many times to look at the rock collections and finally made a decision.

Holding his arms outspread, "Ug has many big rocks piled very high," and with his thumb and finger about a tiny bit apart, he continued, "and Ug Ug has lots of tiny rocks that stretch as far as the eye can see."

Now, this was not good enough for Ug and Ug Ug, and in a statement that would reverberate throughout history, they proclaimed, "Size doesn't matter."

So, Ug Ug Ug went off to think. He thought, and he thought. He clubbed a woman, ate some mammoth, and thought some more. Then it struck him. He went to a rock collection and picked up a rock. He called it, "One," and placed it in a new pile. He took another rock, called it, "Two," and placed it alongside the first. He did this again and again, naming each rock.

Thus, Ug Ug Ug, who also decided that moment to change his name to Thad, had invented numbers.

Now folks, there is a point to this story. Numbers did come about in a simple fashion like this, the need to count things. However, the worlds of algebra, trigonometry, and even calculus grew out of numbers. From such a simple concept like numbers, a rich, strange, albeit confusing but highly confusing structure came into being. This is the beauty of mathematics.