{"id":28734,"date":"2022-02-17T03:31:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T03:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=28734"},"modified":"2022-03-01T00:39:43","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T00:39:43","slug":"happy-twosday-why-numbers-like-2-22-22-have-been-too-fascinating-for-over-2000-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/happy-twosday-why-numbers-like-2-22-22-have-been-too-fascinating-for-over-2000-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Twosday! Why numbers like 2\/22\/22 have been too fascinating for over 2,000 years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Barry Markovsky<\/a>, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Feb. 22, the world hits an unprecedented milestone. It\u2019s the date itself: 2\/22\/22. And this so-called \u201cTwosday\u201d falls on a Tuesday, no less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true the number pattern stands out, impossible to miss. But does it mean anything? Judging by the thousands of commemorative products available for purchase online, it may appear to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwosday\u201d carries absolutely no historical significance or any cosmic message. Yet it does speak volumes about our brains and cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a social psychologist<\/a> who studies how paranormal claims and pseudoscience<\/a> take hold as popular beliefs. They\u2019re nearly always absurd from a scientific perspective, but they\u2019re great for illustrating how brains, people, groups and cultures work together to create shared meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing patterns<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Twosday isn\u2019t the only date with a striking pattern. This century alone has had a couple Onesdays (1\/11\/11 and 11\/11\/11), and 11 other months with repetitions such as 01\/01\/01, 06\/06\/06 and 12\/12\/12. We\u2019ll hit Threesday, 3\/3\/33, in 11 years, and Foursday 11 years after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brain has evolved<\/a> a fantastic capacity to find meanings and connections. Doing so once meant the difference between survival and death. Recognizing paw prints in the soil, for example, signified dangerous predators to be avoided, or prey to be captured and consumed. Changes in daylight indicated when to plant crops and when to harvest them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when survival isn\u2019t at stake, it\u2019s rewarding<\/a> to detect a pattern such as a familiar face<\/a> or song<\/a>. Finding one, the brain zaps its synapses with a little shot of dopamine, incentivizing itself to keep finding more patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a number sequence seems to jump out at us, this is an example of apophenia<\/a>: perceiving meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term was first developed<\/a> to characterize a symptom of schizophrenia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another example of apophenia is astrology<\/a>, which visually connects stars into constellations. These are the familiar Zodiac signs such as \u201cThe Ram,\u201d Aries; or \u201cThe Archer,\u201d Sagittarius. Each sign is linked to meanings associated with its respective object. For example, people born under the sign of Aries are believed to be stubborn like rams. But those signs don\u2019t exist in the sky in any physical sense, and the system fails scientific tests<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading into numbers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The date 2\/22\/22, though striking, carries no inherent meaning beyond its function in our particular calendar. This is true for numbers in general: Their meanings are limited to measuring, labeling or counting things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwosday\u201d is a simple example of a popular form of arithmetical shenanigans: numerology<\/a>, the pseudoscientific practice of attaching supernatural significance to numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numerology can be traced back<\/a> 2,500 years to the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, with alternative systems appearing elsewhere, including China and the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numerology may look mathematical, but it\u2019s more akin to palmistry and reading tea leaves. It has been popularized through magazines, books, movies, television programs, websites and other social media. Assessing the extent of numerology\u2019s popularity is difficult, but the belief that certain numbers are good or bad is common. For example, nearly a quarter of Americans say 7 is lucky<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many kinds<\/a> of numerology. The most popular form assigns numbers to names or other words, and then calculates their \u201croot,\u201d also known as the \u201cdestiny number<\/a>\u201d or \u201cexpression number<\/a>\u201d. It starts by assigning a number to each letter of the alphabet: A = 1, B = 2, up to I = 9, then the cycle repeats with J = 1, K = 2, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, adding up the five numbers in my own first name \u2013 2, 1, 9, 9, and 7 \u2013 yields 28. To find the root, add the digits in 28 to get 10, and then add up those two digits to get 1. For my middle and last names, the roots are 4 and 9. Adding the three roots returns 14; adding those digits reveals that my \u201cdestiny number\u201d is 5, which numerology associates with being free-thinking, adventurous, restless<\/a> and impatient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A woman calculates a destiny number based on numerology. Helin Loik-Tomson\/iStock via Getty Images Plus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More than coincidence?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I was 10 years old when I first encountered numerology. A fellow coin collector showed me a clear plastic case holding two gleaming specimens: a copper Lincoln penny and a silver John F. Kennedy half dollar. On the back of the case was a printed label with numerical \u201cfacts\u201d linking the two presidents<\/a>. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6: day of the week \u2013 Friday \u2013 of both assassinations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7: letters in Kennedy\u2019s and Lincoln\u2019s last names<\/p>\n\n\n\n

15: letters in both assassins\u2019 names<\/p>\n\n\n\n

60: year elected \u2013 Lincoln 1860, Kennedy 1960<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you compile enough of these, it gets eerie. The experience was astonishing enough that I still recall it over a half-century later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are the Lincoln-Kennedy facts just coincidences? What gets overlooked is that they\u2019ve been drawn from a pool of hundreds or thousands of numerical possibilities. Throw away the boring ones and you\u2019ve framed the remaining coincidences in a way that gives them more credit than they deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[More than 140,000 readers get one of The Conversation\u2019s informative newsletters.<\/em> Join the list today<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way of drawing eerie coincidences from very large pools of possibilities was exploited in \u201cThe Bible Code<\/a>,\u201d a best-selling book in the 1990s. The author, Michael Drosnin, took the Old Testament and arranged it into a grid of text<\/a>. A computer algorithm highlighted skip patterns in the grid<\/a>, such as \u201cevery 4th character\u201d, or \u201c2 across, 5 down,\u201d to produce a huge database of letter strings. These were then sifted by another algorithm that searched for words and phrases, and distances between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The method seemed to foretell many historical events, including the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin<\/a> in 1995: A particular skip pattern yielded his name near the phrase \u201cassassin that will assassinate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Findings such as these can seem impressive. However, critics<\/a> have proved that the method works just as well using any sufficiently lengthy text<\/a>. Drosnin himself laid down this gauntlet by challenging critics to find Rabin\u2019s assassination foretold in the novel \u201cMoby-Dick.\u201d Mathematician Brendan McKay<\/a> did exactly that<\/a>, along with \u201cprophecies\u201d for many other deaths \u2013 Lincoln\u2019s and Kennedy\u2019s included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which coincidences people pay attention to is largely a social phenomenon. What sociologist Erich Goode<\/a> terms \u201cparanormalism<\/a>,\u201d a nonscientific approach to extraordinary claims, is sustained and transmitted by group customs, norms and institutions. \u201cThe Bible Code\u201d couldn\u2019t exist without religion, for example, and its popularity was fueled by mass media \u2013 such as its author\u2019s interviews<\/a> on \u201cThe Oprah Winfrey Show\u201d and elsewhere. In her book \u201cScientifical Americans<\/a>,\u201d science writer Sharon Hill<\/a> makes a compelling case that popular culture in the U.S. helps to foster safe havens for individual and collective belief in the pseudoscientific and paranormal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for \u201cTwosday,\u201d I\u2019ll conclude by plumbing its \u201chidden meaning.\u201d Take the three roots of 02, 22 and 2022. We arrive at 2 + 4 + 6 = 12, and the destiny number 3. Some numerologists associate this number with<\/a> optimism and joy. Though I may reject the messenger, I\u2019ll accept that message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barry Markovsky<\/a>, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry Markovsky, University of South Carolina This Feb. 22, the world hits an unprecedented milestone. It\u2019s the date itself: 2\/22\/22. And this so-called \u201cTwosday\u201d falls on a Tuesday, no less. It\u2019s true the number pattern stands out, impossible to miss. But does it mean anything? Judging by the thousands of commemorative products available for purchase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410,8],"tags":[11355,11353,3556,11352,11351,4536,228,6610,461,11354],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28843,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28734\/revisions\/28843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}