ruben stelzner

“First, to encounter the beast, the Words of the Four be addressed”

Faust / Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“First, to encounter the beast, the Words of the Four be addressed”

Faust / Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Meaning of Number 4: The Number of the World

In the philosophy of numbers, the number 4 is considered the “number of the world.” It symbolizes the concrete world, everything we live in and everything that surrounds us. The number 4 is a symbol for the stable frame that everything exists within. According to the ancient Greeks, the world is built from four stable, irreducible basic elements: fire, water, air, and earth. These four elements are considered outdated today, but the 4, or fourfold division, is still the system that captures and organizes our world especially well. The divisions into four cardinal directions and four seasons are prominent examples. But we also know the four states of matter, and we calculate within a four-part coordinate system, where every point finds its place. An ancient symbol for the meaning of 4 is the cross, whose four ends show the classic fourfold division of the world. In the philosophy of nature, the four has always been understood as the number of order and stability.

That’s probably why the cross still appears today, even in modern astronomy, in the symbol for our planet Earth. Earth stands for the world we live in. The symbol of the cross is defined by the right angle, which is itself a symbol of stability. Among the universal principles, the 4 is the one that symbolizes our world.

The Cross: A Symbol of the 4
Everything that manifests does so at a right angle. Fire burns upward from the ground at a right angle, plants grow this way, animals follow this same principle, and people build their buildings at right angles so they’ll be stable. Symbolically, the cross brings the differences of the world into a stable, fitting, and balanced relationship with each other.

In the classic hero myth, the four often appears at the beginning. It’s the village the hero comes from, their home, their origin, their stable foundation, their ground, the place they’ll also return to after their hero’s journey. The connection between 4 and home, the world we come from, still shows up today in terms like “quarters” (Quartier) or our own “four walls” (vier Waende), the place we live (more on this in Numbers in Fairy Tales, Myths, and Literature).

The basic structure of many games, or the foundation they’re played on, is also very often divided into four, whether that’s the suits of a card deck or the square pattern of a chessboard, where the pieces move. They symbolically stand for the game of life. Geometrically speaking, the square is the symbol for the 4. In three-dimensional space, it’s the rectangular box, or cuboid. Both, with their right angles, are the stable building blocks of matter, the pieces a whole can be assembled from especially well (see also the post Philosophy and Mathematics).

Synonyms for the Principle of the Number 4:

Nature, Mother Earth, object, matter, stability.
Symbols include the cross, the tetrahedron, the cube, the square, the right angle, home, and the village

Question:

Is that maybe why the square Lego brick became one of the most famous toys of all time: because you can use it to rebuild almost anything that exists in the world?

Quotes on the Meaning of Number 4:

„What is the form of the cross itself, but the four-square form of the world?“ (Latin original: “Ipsa species crucis, quid est nisi forma quadrata mundi?”“)
(Hieronymus)

„Almost all of the networks that sustain life are approximately self-similar fractals. […] What’s especially fascinating is that the number 4 shows up in all of these exponents. It shows up everywhere, across the whole spectrum of life, because it’s of fundamental importance for determining countless measurable traits of organisms, regardless of their evolutionary body plan.
(Geoffrey West)

Related Topics:

For the meaning of the other numbers, see: The Principle of Numbers.

Image credit: iStock.com/LagartoFilm (numbers on a green background)