Very cool, that multiple species
Across widely divergent lineages
Have separately evolved numerosity,
In some cases even showing signs
Of a rudimentary grasp of emptiness,
Zero, arithmetic, and the number line.
How wonderful to know others
Speak the language of nature!
Why would a tendency to organize
Magnitude from left to right, found
In birds as well as humans, just as
On the number line, be a part
Of nature’s own language? No one
Seems to go that far. Ascending
Numerosity from left to right may just
Be something within some brains.
Would the null set, then, be nature’s?
What of numbers themselves?
What makes math the language
Of the cosmos, other than languages
That say so? It fits. It works.
And what are fit and work? Prediction
And a bit of control thanks to same.
Alright, it is cool, very cool, that
Multiple taxa long separated
Use some of the same tricks to count,
And coolest is the core trick of likeness,
Of interpreting different but similar items
As quantifiable repetitions of the same.
If that abstraction of likeness is a trick
Common to many forms of life,
It’s a good one. Whether or not
It tells life something intrinsic about
Cosmic conversation, that’s different.
Math predicts better than any other
Way yet known of parsing memories,
Organic or prosthetic, of the past.
But the past may have more tricks
Than that, more than even math has
Dreamt of—and as for numbers, lines,
And nulls, do they converse or parrot?
