General / Off-Topic Is there a link between 10 fingers - base 10 maths - and the universe?

[CMDR Pausanias]

Has anyone else ever wondered about the fact that we have 10 fingers, a base 10 mathematics system and from that humans have been able to work out the mathematical movement of the entire universe, which has ultimately lead to Elite Dangerous giving us an accurate universe to exist in?
Can beings with 12 digits still work all this out? Or is there a power at work here?

 

[Shads]

10 is actually a bad number to base a numeric system around. Which is why computers use Hex-decimal

 

[cpy]

It does not matter! It would work no matter how many fingers any creature have!
12 base system is great for trading. You have easy splitting: 1/12 1/6 1/3 1/2 2/3 etc.

 

[Whiterose]

Judging by some of the motorists I drive past Binary seems to be the option....as they only have one finger

 

[AJ_Impy]

Short answer: No.

 

[Huros]

We only have 8 fingers......

 

[wenkman]

mathematics and physics are used to used other numeric systems and can calculate in more dimensions as just 1,2,3,4.

i think i read they had found some physics laws are easier to view when written down with 8-dimensional vectors...

as a non expert i would say, the "brains" of our species left the 3-Dimensions and their 10 fingers behind a while ago..

 

[pev69]

I'm sure there is a link between us being 10-finger creatures, and using a 10-base number system, but otherwise, no, the universe can be undestood with any number base.

 

[Tetsuko]

Octopi are apparently very clever and they have 8 legs. Perhaps they understand the universe better than we do. Not the one I saw getting it's brains beaten out on a rock by a Greek fisherman though.

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

Back away from the bong!

 

[khaitom]

the base is always 10.

Did you mean ten?

 

[OnePercent]

Having 8 fingers and opposable thumbs was more important to early civilisation than a numeric system.

 

[Mephane]

In fact in order to properly understand the universe, a simple base 10 (or base anything) numeric system is insufficient, because there are numbers that cannot be represented that way, for example, imaginary numbers.

 

[pev69]

the base is always 10.

That's clever, but not necessarily true if you consider that "one" and "zero" can be represented by any symbol or glyph or sound or color or whatever , so "1" and "0" are only our current convention as is the ten-base number system!

 

[Altissimus]

As has been mentioned base 12 is far more effective. It has been theorised by anthropologists and mathematicians both that if we had used base 12, our understanding of mathematics would be generally more advanced - more factors results in faster understanding of basic principles results in faster understand of more advanced principles. More advanced mathematics affects everything - engineering to economics and everything inbetween.

And before you say "...but 10 fingers...", make a fist with one hand and count the knuckles on your fingers. Barring any nasty accidents with snakes, you should have 12.

 

[xondk]

10 is actually a bad number to base a numeric system around. Which is why computers use Hex-decimal

Why is 10 a bad number to base a numeric system around? before computers it made a whole lot of sense?
computers use hex yes, but that really has more to do with the binary nature of computers then it being 'better' then base 10

 

[wenkman]

the base is always 10.

Did you mean ten?

There are 10 types of people, the ones that get the joke and the others.

 

[Captain_Chaos]

10 is actually a bad number to base a numeric system around. Which is why computers use Hex-decimal

Uhm, no. Computers use binary. Humans use hexadecimal when talking about computers because four binary digits neatly fit into exactly one hexadecimal digit.

 

[pev69]

There are 10 types of people, the ones that get the joke and the others.

Yes, and those that do, also know that christmas and halloween are actually the same thing, because 25 dec = 31 oct.

 

[Captain_Chaos]

Has anyone else ever wondered about the fact that we have 10 fingers, a base 10 mathematics system and from that humans have been able to work out the mathematical movement of the entire universe, which has ultimately lead to Elite Dangerous giving us an accurate universe to exist in? Can beings with 12 digits still work all this out? Or is there a power at work here?

I'd say the base of the numbering system you use is completely arbitrary and unrelated to the ability to discover and describe the universe. I wonder if you're being subconsciously influenced by those "powers of ten" animations that go from the very small to the very large into thinking that our universe is somehow based on powers of ten?

Beings with 12 digits would have been able to work it all out exactly as easily as us. Perhaps even very slightly more easily, since as others have pointed out a base 12 numbering system is slightly more fluid than base 10 (because 12 has more divisors than 10, namely 2, 3, 4 and 6 as opposed to 2 and 5).