What Number Is God?: Metaphors, Metaphysics, Metamathematics, and the Nature of Things

By Sarah Voss

Book Overview

Uses modern mathematical metaphors to better understand religion and philosophy.

The ancient Greeks held that "number rules the universe" and that "God ever geometrizes." Here author Sarah Voss explores the historical connection between mathematics and religion in her provocative book, What Number Is God? Citing many examples, she shows that humankind has long used mathematics metaphorically to understand and make sense of life's most fundamental questions.

As Voss shows, contemporary society also uses metaphors of mathematics to investigate such issues, though in a fashion that is frequently overlooked or denied. The intentional use of contemporary mathematical ideas as metaphors for metaphysical notions can have a dramatic impact on modern society, in part by providing new symbols to replace old religious language which has lost its power to excite.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791424170
• ISBN13: 9780791424179
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

What Number Is God?

The author directs her effort to a generalization of the following idea: that mathematics plays a fundamental role in metaphysics,, theology and religion. What is distinctive about this study is that the factor connecting the three realms is taken to be mathematics. Voss' thesis is that mathematics has been used throughout human history as a connecting device between metaphysics, theology and religion. In addition, she suggests that the form it takes as such a device is primarily the form of metaphor, that mathematics is currently used metaphorically as a connecting and explanatory device between these three realms. To make mathematics visible as such a metaphorical tool can be of considerable benefit today in all three fields. It should be noted that this study, as the previous reviewer has already stated, is targeted towards a general, educated audience, and, specifically, those inquiring individuals who are trying to pull together various different things they know into one coherent whole.

Spiritual math

Sarah Voss' What Number is God brings home how deeply all of life, including sacred symbols, is imbued with numbers, geometrical patterns, and physical measurement and theory. Her narrative, filled with personal anecdotes and interesting historical tidbits, ranges from the ancient Egyptian pyramids and Greek Pythagoreans to modern quantum mechanics, holography, and chaos theory, and she ties all of these closely to the unending human search for oneness with the ultimate. In this age of overspecialization, Voss' book is one of relatively few for a general audience that breaks down artificial barriers between specialties. In addition to the discussions of religious symbolism, the book includes one of the best discussions I have read of models, metaphors, and how both are part of the relationship between quantitative concepts and the things they are supposed to represent -- and therefore between mathematics and daily life. She introduces this discussion of models and metaphors with a nice personal story about her efforts as a student to bridge these gaps and the resistance she encountered from traditonal academics. In general, this book is heartily recommended for anyone, specialist or nonspecialist, interested in new dimensions in liberal spirituality or in the human relevance of mathematics and science.Daniel S. Levine -- Professor of Psychology (formerly Associate Professor of Mathematics), University of Texas at Arlington, levine@uta.edu