ROBIN ROBERTSON

The Evolution of Number

Self-Reflection and
The Archetype of Order
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L a t e in his life, Jung came to believe that number was the primary archetype
which underlay the multiplicity of other archetypes. In his famous essay
"Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle," Jung describes the archetypa
significance of numbers 0969):
There is something peculiar, one might even say mysterious,
about numbers.... If . . a group of objects is deprived of every single
one of its properties or characteristics, there still remains, at the end,
its number, which seems to indicate that number is something irreduci-
ble... . [something which] helps more than anything else to bring order
into the chaos of appearances.. I t may well be the most primitive
element of order in the human mind.. .We [can] define number
psychologically as an archetype of order which has become conscious.
(p. S70)
What in the world does Jung mean when he says that "we can define numbe
psychologically as an archetype of order which has become conscious?" Most non-
mathematicians do not think of numbers in that way. But consider that there is
no such thing as a number existing in physical reality. Our sense of numbers is
purely relational. The thing common between my two eyes and my two ears and
my two arms and my two legs is that there are two of each. A relationship does
not exist as a "thing"; it is a statement about the connections between "things."
Mathematics is the study of the relationships between numbers; hence the rela
tionships between relationships.
The primary relationship in all of our lives is the relationship between the
ego and the Self, what Edward Edinger has called the ego-Self axis. As the mos
primitive expression of order and relationship in the universe, number directly