pop showed him how to diagram sanskrit grammar so the little x's and 's added up to a sentence , and elliott enjoyed this a lot , even thugh the words themselves flited from his mind .
somehow his interest turned from the language to the x's and the y's . subject plus verb plus direct object equals a sentence .in english , amnyway , english moved like a number line , marching to the right . but there were other languages that put the direct object first , or even the verb . x STAYED THE SUBJECT , Y STILL DESCRIBED THE VERB . MATH DESCRIBED LANGUAGE ; WOW ! .
he had first discovered numbers when hwe was three or four . someone gave him a set of magnetic numbers and letters that his mother out on the refrigetor for him , and he threw away the letters and kept the numbers , because he couldn't read , but he could add .
he was sure numbers were real . one was the stick , a skinny black stick that got left behind all the time , two was the blue policeman ; zero was the bully , red and angry . it turned all the numbers it could devide into a reddish color .
to him these four numbers were as real as ricks , more real . alive in some sense , but what were they ? what was a number ? where did numbers come from ?had humans invented them or discovered them ? where did they go ? he thought they followed a line toeard some far infinity where a little breeze sprang up and supported them .
he never saw the integers as hard 0edh=ged ; to him they were like clouds , with moving centers depending on what was pulling on them from either side . the clouds touched each other , even early on in the line of numbers got bigger the clouds became a continuum , a long streak of cirrus .
but when he was young , he had little interest in the largenumbers ; it was zero , one , two , three , and the rest was just amplification .
somehow his interest turned from the language to the x's and the y's . subject plus verb plus direct object equals a sentence .in english , amnyway , english moved like a number line , marching to the right . but there were other languages that put the direct object first , or even the verb . x STAYED THE SUBJECT , Y STILL DESCRIBED THE VERB . MATH DESCRIBED LANGUAGE ; WOW ! .
he had first discovered numbers when hwe was three or four . someone gave him a set of magnetic numbers and letters that his mother out on the refrigetor for him , and he threw away the letters and kept the numbers , because he couldn't read , but he could add .
he was sure numbers were real . one was the stick , a skinny black stick that got left behind all the time , two was the blue policeman ; zero was the bully , red and angry . it turned all the numbers it could devide into a reddish color .
to him these four numbers were as real as ricks , more real . alive in some sense , but what were they ? what was a number ? where did numbers come from ?had humans invented them or discovered them ? where did they go ? he thought they followed a line toeard some far infinity where a little breeze sprang up and supported them .
he never saw the integers as hard 0edh=ged ; to him they were like clouds , with moving centers depending on what was pulling on them from either side . the clouds touched each other , even early on in the line of numbers got bigger the clouds became a continuum , a long streak of cirrus .
but when he was young , he had little interest in the largenumbers ; it was zero , one , two , three , and the rest was just amplification .
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