From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 22:32:00 +1000
Subject: Book Review - The Mystery of Numbers

     title: The Mystery of Numbers
        by: Annemarie Schimmel
 publisher: Oxford University Press 1993
  subjects: mathematics, mysticism, anthropology
     other: 314 pages, b&w illustrations, bibliography, index
   summary: there is an integer between three and five, but it is not four,
          : and its true name and nature are not to be revealed.

_The Mystery of Numbers_ is a rather odd book.  It begins with a
very brief introduction to different number systems and beliefs
about numbers, covering the Pythagoreans, gnosticism, the Cabala,
Islamic mysticism, medieval numerology and numerical puzzles.
The bulk of the book is a kind of encyclopedia of numbers: each
of the numbers up to 21 gets its own chapter; after that they are
dealt with "en masse".  Each chapter is an unordered and pretty much
unstructured compilation of beliefs about the subject number, mostly
drawn from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  There is no attempt at
cross-cultural comparative analysis, or at relating beliefs about
numbers to other symbolic systems.  Schimmel shows off an immense
knowledge of historical and literary detail, but doesn't even try
to synthesize it into more than a collection of random tidbits.
Here is a typical extract:

  In philosophy and psychology, 3 serves as the number of
  classification: time, space, and causality belong together.
  Since Plato, the ideal has been taken to be composed of the
  good, the true, and the beautiful, while Augustine established
  the categories of being, recognizing, and willing.  The Indian
  _Chandogya Upanishad_ likewise mentions several triadic groups,
  such as hearing, understanding, and knowledge, and in the later
  Upanishads, the 3 basic values that express the fullness of the one
  divine being are sat, chit, and ananda (being, thinking, and bliss).

  According to the doctrine of the Zohar, the world was created
  from 3, namely wisdom, reason, and perception, manifested in the
  fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  For the Cabalists, the uppermost
  triad of the ten sefirot represents the potencies of perception;
  the medium triad, the primordial powers of spiritual life; and the
  lowest triad, the primordial power of vitality.  Manichaeism knows 3
  ways, and the Temple of the Grail has 3 gates, those of right faith,
  chastity, and humility.

and so on (the chapter on 3 runs to 28 pages).  This is fine for a
few chapters, but it soon gets rather tedious.

_The Mystery of Numbers_ is not a book anyone would want to read in
one go, and many will find it completely unapproachable; I read the
introduction and the first few chapters, then skimmed quickly through
the rest.  It could be used as a reference, for answering questions
like "What is the the significance of the number five in this poem?",
but the lack of structure will be a problem there (though there is a
decent index).  I thought this was a rather disappointing treatment
of what should be an interesting subject.

--

%T	The Mystery of Numbers
%A	Annemarie Schimmel
%I	Oxford University Press
%C	Oxford
%D	1993
%O	paperback, bibliography, index
%G	ISBN 0-19-508919-7
%P	x,314
%K	mathematics, mysticism, anthropology

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
25 January 1995
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