From Osher Doctorow Ph.D.
I am glad to notice the heavy volume of replies to my Feigenbaum Constant and Weak Force posting, although it is amusing to notice that they mostly concern my comment that I'd forgotten what 666 means. I hadn't been reading the replies because I'd been watching the California Recall Election for Governor here in California, which may explain why I had trouble recalling what 666 means (?). Actually, I looked up 666 as internet keywords ("The number 666") after seeing the replies and apparently in Revelation verse 18 Chapter 13 the Number of the Beast 666 is mentioned, which is taken to mean the Devil. Also there are some hysterically funny jokes at geocities.com about 666, including extremely high precision 666.0000... and so on. Is there anything that one can learn about fractals or chaos from 666 aside from Jerry Iuliano's and my and your interesting comments? Well, this got me to thinking after reading the comments and looking up the sites mentioned: what exactly was 666 doing in the Gospel or New Testament? According to one site, 6 + 6 + 6 = 18, which is the verse in which it appears, and chapter 13 is supposed to represent death because of the 13 traitors, etc. Well, what if 666 was put into chapter 13 verse 18 by whoever wrote that verse knowing that 6 + 6 + 6 = 18? What would be the purpose of this? Let's put on our Fractal Thinking Caps (FTCs, which also stands for Federal Trade Commission incidentally), and think about this. Whoever wrote that wanted to point out that Armageddon was coming. I suppose that a visitor from Outer Space looking at the ensuing history of humanity would tend to agree, although not quite in the literal sense. But what better way for the writer of ch. 13 verse 18 to emphasize the importance of his/her verse and chapter than by a mystical emotional number which succeeding generations would remember more than the usual warnings of future doom? This moves us into the rather non-mainstream (if not dubious) field of historical reconstruction, but wait! There's more. What would give a scholar whose main literary interests had been the Old Testament an interest in 666? According to one of the sites, this was related to the worth of the gifts received by King Solomon from Egypt (I think via Queen Sheba). So it started in the Old Testament. According to this interpretation, it was simply appropriated into the New Testament. This isn't the first such case where Old Testament ideas were used in the New Testament. But what does King Solomon have to do with anything in Armaggedon? Well, Queen Sheba was so to speak his downfall (well, in a sense - I suppose that Bill Clinton would have other comments on that). His people had been slaves in Egypt. Also, King Solomon was the smartest King of Israel. To my recollection, he was into numerology in addition and was stated to have "spoken with animals". This would appeal to New Testament writers and scholars probably. Ladies and Gentlemen, what we may have here is a number 666 that represents not the Devil but Number Theory - the birth of Number Theory which led to fractals and chaos and to where we are today (give or take some problems off the internet). As for the member of Fractint who has the social security number with 666 in it, the person is not the Devil but a prospective assistant Moderator of Fracint! I've forgotten his/her name, but I'll look it up as soon as there is another pause in the California gubernatorial race. Osher Doctorow