Introducing
What's a (natural) number? What does it look like?
We represent numbers with symbols like 1, 2, 3, I, II, III. We are aware of objects that have a numeric property: A square has 4 sides.
But, what about the number itself? What is it? What does it look like?
In 1923, John von Neumann proposed a set-theoretic construction of natural numbers: We can start with the empty set, and then define the next number as the set containing all previous numbers:
0 =
1 =
2 = 0, 1 = , ,
3 = 0, 1, 2 = , , ,
...and so on.
"Number 10, Red", is inspired by von Neumann's construction. Each closed shape is represents a set.
