The Number 47

By On May 18, 2009 · 5 Comments

As long as I can remem­ber, 47 has been my favorite num­ber, though I never had any par­tic­u­lar rea­son to be drawn to it.  There are now 47 posts on this blog. When I pair that fact with the bit of syn­chronic­ity from last week, I real­ize that the uni­verse has informed me that it is time to write a trib­ute to the mys­tery of 47.

I’ve heard of other num­bers hav­ing followers. I’ve heard there are many peo­ple who believe that see­ing 11:11 means that the uni­verse is try­ing to reveal some­thing.  I found that idea very fas­ci­nat­ing for a while, but I think the uni­verse must not have any­thing very spe­cial to tell me just yet, since I never ran­domly look up and see elevens any­where.  I know sev­eral peo­ple whose favorite num­ber is 7.  Oth­ers pick 13, just to buck the sys­tem. But 47?!  47 is my num­ber, I’d always felt it was unique.  Not so much.

Cruis­ing the inter­net last week, I came across a link to Awk­ward Fam­ily Pho­tos.  As I was gig­gling my way through the pages of the album, I saw that 47 appar­ently is an awk­ward num­ber.  I had to read the com­ments on that one. They pointed me to the 47 Society’s web­page.  Dis­ap­point­ingly, it appears to be inac­tive, but I was intrigued, and kept researching.

Accord­ing to the Ponoma Col­lege web­site, “In 1964, Pro­fes­sor of Math­e­mat­ics Don­ald Bent­ley proved that all num­bers are equal to 47.” I feel so vin­di­cated, because that’s exactly how I use it!  Now I’ll know I’m not really exag­ger­at­ing, as 47 is accu­rate at all times.

Fur­ther­more, the fas­ci­na­tion with the num­ber 47 infected the Star Trek uni­verse.  The num­ber 47 has fea­tured promi­nently in episodes from The Next Generation’s fourth sea­son for­ward, because of writer Joe Menosky.  He is a Ponoma grad­u­ate, and wrote for TNG, Deep Space Nine and Voy­ager.  The inclu­sion of 47 in these series has been tracked obses­sively.  Rick Berman was a fel­low writer dur­ing some of these episodes, and joked about the inclu­sion, “47 is 42, cor­rected for infla­tion.”  Squee!  A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ref­er­ence wrapped up in a shiny Star Trek coating!

I really won­der now if my sub­con­scious got some pro­gram­ming from watch­ing so much Star Trek, or if it’s truly just coin­ci­den­tal.  Will I turn into this guy?

 
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Facebook Twitter Delicious Mixx StumbleUpon Digg

5 Responses to The Number 47

  1. Sarah says:
    May 19, 2009 at 9:04 am

    I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for 47s now. I’ve never noticed them.

    I’ve always been really fond of the num­ber 8.

  2. Apollo says:
    May 19, 2009 at 11:06 am

    I’ve always liked the num­bers three and sev­en­teen but that’s because I was born on 3/17. I’m a sim­ple kind of man. Three is all over the damn place. Sev­en­teen? Not so often, really. The 47 thing is intrigu­ing, though.

  3. Chris says:
    May 20, 2009 at 9:33 am

    From the first day I met her, LG used 47 for her anynum­ber, con­sis­tently. It can be the arbi­trar­ily large num­ber or it can be the non­spe­cific group­ing. Either way, 47 gets the point across to me quite well.

    I sup­pose that I use 16 and 9, though I don’t really take note of num­bers all that much.

  4. Gamebird says:
    May 20, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    I just found your blog! Fear me!! Bwahahahaha!

    I might just use that brown sugar cookie recipe. Of course I’m try­ing to be on a diet, which is why it looks so yummy and such a good idea to make cookies.

    I don’t have a favorite num­ber. For me, all the basic num­bers (1–12) are linked indeli­bly with color and per­son­al­ity. That’s prob­a­bly from how they were pre­sented to me as a kinder­gartener. One is white and a boy and friendly and two is yel­low and a bit tomboy­ish (a girl). Three is a very girl­ish girl and red while four is an over­ac­tive boy (and green). I’ve never asked if any­one else sees/thinks of num­bers in that way. It’s a pathetic fal­lacy, I guess. I recently dis­cov­ered the mean­ing of “pathetic fal­lacy” and have been amused to find it all over the place.

  5. LadyGlutter says:
    May 22, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Obvi­ously, I don’t take it very seri­ously, but I do think it’s inter­est­ing that some peo­ple have num­bers they iden­tify with. Humans are weird.

    Also, hi Game­bird! I’m amazed you were able to nav­i­gate the con­fus­ing maze that was click­ing a link labeled “My Web­site.” Nice Internet-fu, there. ;)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>