Reflecting on his second book, Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind<\/i><\/a>, and the overwhelming response from fascinated readers seeking to know what it\u2019s really like to experience words and numbers as colors and textures \u2014 to experience the beauty that a poem and a prime number exert on a synesthete in equal measure \u2014 Tammet offers an absorbing simulation of the synesthetic mind:<\/p>\n Imagine. <\/i><\/p>\n Close your eyes and imagine a space without limits, or the infinitesimal events that can stir up a country\u2019s revolution. Imagine how the perfect game of chess might start and end: a win for white, or black, or a draw? Imagine numbers so vast that they exceed every atom in the universe, counting with eleven or twelve fingers instead of ten, reading a single book in an infinite number of ways. <\/i><\/p>\n Such imagination belongs to everyone. It even possesses its own science: mathematics. Ricardo Nemirovsky and Francesca Ferrara, who specialize in the study of mathematical cognition, write that \u201clike literary fiction, mathematical imagination entertains pure possibilities.\u201d This is the distillation of what I take to be interesting and important about the way in which mathematics informs our imaginative life. Often we are barely aware of it, but the play between numerical concepts saturates the way we experience the world.<\/i><\/p>\n Sketches from synesthetic artist and musician Michal Levy’s animated visualization of John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps.’ Click for details.<\/p><\/div>\n Tammet, above all, is enchanted by the mesmerism of the unknown, which lies at the heart of science<\/a> and the heart of poetry<\/a>:<\/p>\n The fact that we have never read an endless book, or counted to infinity (and beyond!) or made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization (all subjects of essays in the book) should not prevent us from wondering: what if? \u2026 Literature adds a further dimension to the exploration of those pure possibilities. As Nemirovsky and Ferrara suggest, there are numerous similarities in the patterns of thinking and creating shared by writers and mathematicians (two vocations often considered incomparable.)<\/i><\/p>\n In fact, this very link between mathematics and fiction, between numbers and storytelling, underpins much of Tammet\u2019s exploration. Growing up as one of nine siblings, he recounts how the oppressive nature of existing as a small number in a large set spurred a profound appreciation of numbers as sensemaking mechanisms for life:<\/p>\n Effaced as individuals, my brothers, sisters, and I existed only in number. The quality of our quantity became something we could not escape. It preceded us everywhere: even in French, whose adjectives almost always follow the noun (but not when it comes to une grande famille). \u2026 From my family I learned that numbers belong to life. The majority of my math acumen came not from books but from regular observations and day-to-day interactions. Numerical patterns, I realized, were the matter of our world.<\/i><\/p>\n This awareness was the beginning of Tammet\u2019s synesthetic sensibility:<\/p>\n Like colors, the commonest numbers give character, form, and dimension to our world. Of the most frequent \u2014 zero and one \u2014 we might say that they are like black and white, with the other primary colors \u2014 red, blue, and yellow \u2014 akin to two, three, and four. Nine, then, might be a sort of cobalt or indigo: in a painting it would contribute shading, rather than shape. We expect to come across samples of nine as we might samples of a color like indigo\u2014only occasionally, and in small and subtle ways. Thus a family of nine children surprises as much as a man or woman with cobalt-colored hair.<\/i><\/p>\n Daniel Tammet. Portrait by Jerome Tabet.<\/p><\/div>\n Sampling from Jorge Luis Borges\u2019s humorous fictional taxonomy of animals<\/a>, inspired by the work of nineteenth-century German mathematician Georg Cantor<\/a>, Tammet points to the deeper insight beneath our efforts to itemize and organize the universe \u2014 something Umberto Eco knew when he proclaimed that \u201cthe list is the origin of culture\u201d<\/a> and Susan Sontag intuited when she reflected on why lists appeal to us<\/a>. Tammet writes:<\/p>\n Borges here also makes several thought-provoking points. First, though a set as familiar to our understanding as that of \u201canimals\u201d implies containment and comprehension, the sheer number of its possible subsets actually swells toward infinity. With their handful of generic labels (\u201cmammal,\u201d \u201creptile,\u201d \u201camphibious,\u201d etc.), standard taxonomies conceal this fact. To say, for example, that a flea is tiny, parasitic, and a champion jumper is only to begin to scratch the surface of all its various aspects.<\/i><\/p>\n Second, defining a set owes more to art than it does to science. Faced with the problem of a near endless number of potential categories, we are inclined to choose from a few \u2014 those most tried and tested within our particular culture. Western descriptions of the set of all elephants privilege subsets like \u201cthose that are very large,\u201d and \u201cthose possessing tusks,\u201d and even \u201cthose possessing an excellent memory,\u201d while excluding other equally legitimate possibilities such as Borges\u2019s \u201cthose that at a distance resemble flies,\u201d or the Hindu \u201cthose that are considered lucky.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/i><\/p>\n Reading Borges invites me to consider the wealth of possible subsets into which my family \u201cset\u201d could be classified, far beyond those that simply point to multiplicity.<\/i><\/p>\n Tammet circles back to the shared gifts of literature and mathematics, which both help cultivate our capacity for compassion:<\/p>\n Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.<\/i><\/p>\n The rest of the essays in Thinking In Numbers<\/i><\/b><\/a>, ranging from fascinating biographical anecdotes to speculative fiction imagining young Shakespeare\u2019s first arithmetic lessons in zero, are equal parts mind-bending and soul-stirring, and altogether delightful in innumerable ways. Complement it with Paul Lockhart\u2019s multisensory exploration of the whimsy of math<\/a>, then revisit the extraordinary feats of other autistic savants, from Gregory Blackstock\u2019s astonishing visual taxonomies<\/a> to Gilles Trehin\u2019s remarkable imaginary city<\/a>.<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n Brain Pickings<\/i><\/a><\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova<\/a>, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for Wired<\/em> UK<\/a> and The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n![\"Sketches](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/desenho-212x300.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Daniel](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/danieltammet-200x300.jpg\")
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