The curious ubiquity of the number three
Hi friends,
If you’re new to this newsletter, welcome! Every week, I share a short piece and a few links on something I’m curious about.
This week a nurse injected the results of months of frantic scientific research into my arm. It felt surreal sitting among hundreds of other New Yorkers in this giant hall in Midtown Manhattan. A year ago, you could hear birds chirping in Times Square. I’m immensely grateful to the essential workers who fought for months while we locked ourselves inside. History will remember them.
Until next week,
Florian
The curious ubiquity of the number three
Have you ever noticed how so many things come in three? The three little pigs. The three branches of Government. The rule of thirds. The Holy Trinity. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I could go on.
Why? What makes three the go-to number?
Here’s my three-part interpretation.
It mimics our reality
We live in a three-dimensional universe. The room you’re sitting in right now has width, breadth and height. This alone may give the number three its gravitas. We move through it, we see through it, we feel through it. It embodies the boundaries of what we can do.
It is the original architecture of our understanding, the lens through which we can make sense of the world around us.
It’s harmonious
Three is the honest broker, the peacemaker and transcender. It brings harmony to the conflictual tendencies of dualities.
In high school, our philosophy teacher would give us a question to answer. We’d have to argue the case for and against but then came the most important part. We’d have to develop a third section to reconcile the two opposing arguments. This was my first encounter with dialectics: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Leave synthesis out of the conversation and thesis and antithesis will burn each other down to the ground. It is that third act that enables common ground to emerge.
It’s edgy
Three is where the plane leaves the tarmac of dots and lines for the skies of complexity.
A study about causal reasoning revealed that people identified three causes on average to any phenomenon or historical event. Three causes seem to be the right equilibrium between an explanation that is too reductionist to be taken seriously and one that is too complex to take action on.
Three is the edge between our hunger for truth and our call to action.
Weekly Wisdom
⛏️ Urban Archaeology: Scott Jordan dedicated his life to dig out objects from the past buried in the ground of New York city. To him, every object tells a story about the past and is a way for us to connect with it. This short documentary is a real pleasure to watch and an ode to the meaning and aesthetics of everyday objects.
🦋 Understanding complexity: I came across this website which does a fantastic job at introducing the core concepts of complexity science. Whether you’re curious about the dynamics of herd immunity, social networks or bird swarming you’ll find something here that will make you go “oooooh, I see!”.
Lateral Thought
“There's no love in a carbon atom, no hurricane in a water molecule, no financial collapse in a dollar bill.”
Peter Dodds
Love the ubiquity of 3!