Do You Experience Number Forms ?

[zoobyshoe]

THis "thing" has only helped me in a vague form of memorization. I can easily remember "about when" something happened ("early june" or "during the late 70s, either 78 or 79," stuff like that) because the location on the number form (it has a NAME!) stands out; but it lacks precision.

It would help a lot if I could actively bend it right where I wanted it to. If I could fold it over exactly 12 times between zero and 586, for example and tell you the quotient, now that would be handy. I've tried it many times. Even if I could straighten it out, I think it would work better for math.

If I lost it, I think it would occur to me, after short while, "where did it go?" And I think that would be it.

That's pretty interesting. The people Cytowic focused on all had a good use for it. BUT none were involved in activities that relied heavily on math. If a person's main field of interest is heavily math dependent a Number Form might well be a liability, a kind of lure down a path that is irrelevant and has to be ignored. Both you and Averagesupernova seem to have to obviate it in many cases, and attempts at getting it to work in your favor fail because it isn't plastic.

All researchers into this, and synesthesia, end up having to talk about it at the level of cross modal association. A cross modal association is when you perceive a thing with one sense but can more or less accurately imagine what it would be like to perceive it with another. The classic example is sight-touch. If I show you a bunch of elementary shapes, a sphere, a cone, a cube, carved out of wood, and then shut off the lights, you will be able to pick out which is the sphere, the cone, and the cube in the dark, by touch alone, even though you have never touched the carvings before. You have made a cross modal association between sight and touch.

Having a Number Form is not classified as synesthesia because it is a concept - sensory cross modal association and synesthesia was defined only to refer to cross -sensory associations. One wants to keep the taxonomy straight, but having a Number Form is clearly as vivid and insistent a reaction as many forms of synesthesia (and I have to suspect the neurological mechanism will turn out to be essentially the same when they figure out what the mechanisms are).

So, you mentioned you also make a mild cross modal association between shape and sound when the circumstances are right. I'm interested to hear about that. What sounds seem like what shape, and what is the shape of a certain sound? When does this happen, etc; whatever details occur to you will be interesting. Where do you feel the shapes? Hands, somewhere on the body? That kind of thing.

 

[rhody]

Nice to see someone get so exited about a neurological thread!

I found it:

"The calculus, the symbols, the operators had for him almost as tangible a reality as the physical quantities on which they worked. Feynman associated colors with the abstract variables of the formulas he understood so intimately. 'As I'm talking,' he once said, 'I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

Genius
p.131

This doesn't sound like a number form to me, but it's a pretty brief description, and he may have gone into it in more detail in a letter or conversation somewhere.

Zooby,

Found my example, Genius, page 244. It wasn't witnessed by a family member, it was someone who went to Cornell with Feynman First, I need to qualify why Feynman did these exercises:

Feynman said to Dyson, and Dyson agreed, that Enistein's great work had sprung from physical intuition and that when Einstein stopped creating it was because "he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations." Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic.

A Cornell dormitory neighbor opened Feynman's to find him rolling on the floor beside his bed as he worked on a problem. When he was not rolling about, he was at least murmuring rhythmically or drumming his fingertips. In part the process of scientific visualization is a process of putting oneself in nature: in an imagined beam of light, in a relativistic electron.

and on the next page:

The mathematical symbols he used every day became entangled with his physical sensation of motion, pressure, acceleration... Somehow he invested the abstract symbols with physical meaning, even as he gained control over his raw intuition by applying his knowledge of how the symbols could be manipulated.

This sounds very similar to your observation for Nicolai Tesla. According to Cytowic synesthesia is: involuntary and automatic, spatially extended, consistent and generic, memorable, and affect laden, both Feynman and Tesla were somehow were able to skip the involuntary and automatic part, and still incorporate the spatially extended part, pressure (touch) as mentioned above at will, which would disqualify Feynman's behavior in this exercise from Cytowic's definition of synesthesia today. He was not responding to blended five sense stimuli, he was creating it !

What interests me most is the discovery and intuition part that physicists use daily trying to make sense of seemingly intractable problems. Cytowic's definition of synesthesia goes a long way in explaining how some of the senses Physicists use come into play. Genius... was published in 1992 by James Gleick. I am sure he was not aware of Cytowic's work because "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" was published the year after in 1993.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

This sounds very similar to your observation for Nicolai Tesla. According to Cytowic synesthesia is: involuntary and automatic, spatially extended, consistent and generic, memorable, and affect laden, both Feynman and Tesla were somehow were able to skip the involuntary and automatic part, and still incorporate the spatially extended part, pressure (touch) as mentioned above at will, which would disqualify Feynman's behavior in this exercise from Cytowic's definition of synesthesia today. He was not responding to blended five sense stimuli, he was creating it !

What interests me most is the discovery and intuition part that physicists use daily trying to make sense of seemingly intractable problems. Cytowic's definition of synesthesia goes a long way in explaining how some of the senses Physicists use come into play. Genius... was published in 1992 by James Gleick. I am sure he was not aware of Cytowic's work because "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" was published the year after in 1993.

I hope I didn't give the impression I thought Tesla had any form of synesthesia. He didn't. The thing he did was something else entirely. Tesla, also, did not use this ability to do math. He did math the conventional way, on paper.

Our friend, waht, has both grapheme -> color synesthesia and a Tesla-like ability to deliberately visualize and manipulate images that seem to exist in the space in front of him, outside his body. The latter is not synesthesia. How it relates to his synesthesia is not clear. Waht also has dyslexia and migraine. He's very complex and interesting.

There are a couple faint indications that Feynman might have had some unusually sensory element to his imagination, but I don't think there's enough about it in print to figure out what it was. More I think about it the more I think Cytowic may have jumped to a conclusion about Feynman on scant evidence. The quote about the tan and violet-bluish letters may actually only mean that the book he was referring to had those letters printed in those colors.

 

[waht]

There are a couple faint indications that Feynman might have had some unusually sensory element to his imagination, but I don't think there's enough about it in print to figure out what it was. More I think about it the more I think Cytowic may have jumped to a conclusion about Feynman on scant evidence. The quote about the tan and violet-bluish letters may actually only mean that the book he was referring to had those letters printed in those colors.

I think this was his only comment that links him to having a possible synesthesia.

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

The book he was referring to I think was published around 1945, and I suspect like all books at the time, and today in this subject were printed in black font, except the cover.

[PLAIN]http://www.12000.org/book_collection/HTML_LOC/images/26125f.png

The Bessels functions are labeled as "J" and a closely related Neumann functions as "N." When I work with these functions I think of a color purple for "J", and a reddish for "N." It suffices to think of "Bessel" and it's already purple, even though "B" for "Bessel" is reddish.

Interestingly, the cover of this book really caught my eye because the title suggests these functions should be in the book, and the cover is purple similarly how "J" appears - gives a pleasant feel to it.

 

[waht]

Combine the fact that Feynman used to imagine himself a sub atomic particle, affecting and being affected by other bosons (particles) and fermions (forces) around him (with different masses, spins and velocities) and the fact the he naturally was comfortable with colored number series in twisted chains, then it is not too far of a stretch to suggest that all the necessary mechanics or tools were at his disposal to simply remove the numbers and let his branching thought process create the scaffolding. In looking it up on wiki, it seems Feynman was not the first to invent them though: from the article:

It's interesting to link Feynman's diagrams to the jagged lines as described by number forms. But under the hood Feynman's diagrams try to capture patterns in extremely horrendous mathematical expressions. And even the simplest equations already suggest going from point A to point B so it seems natural to connect those with a line.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think this was his only comment that links him to having a possible synesthesia.

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

This is a longer quote than Gleick had in his book. Gleick doesn't have the first sentence, which pushes the interpretation more toward something unusual. Where did you find this version?

Gleick's descriptions of Feynman's thought processes all sound like yours (and Teslas) but there is no indication where he is getting this information. He doesn't attribute these descriptions to Feynman or anyone who knew him. I'm leary this could be Gleick hyping Feynman's thinking to fit the book title.

The book he was referring to I think was published around 1945, and I suspect like all books at the time, and today in this subject were printed in black font, except the cover.

Good point. It would have been a complex printing feat to have more than one color in a page of text in 1945. This also pushes his "seeing" colors more toward something unusual.

The Bessels functions are labeled as "J" and a closely related Neumann functions as "N." When I work with these functions I think of a color purple for "J", and a reddish for "N." It suffices to think of "Bessel" and it's already purple, even though "B" for "Bessel" is reddish.

Is purple your usual color for "J" and reddish for "N" or are they different in the context of these functions?

Interestingly, the cover of this book really caught my eye because the title suggests these functions should be in the book, and the cover is purple similarly how "J" appears - gives a pleasant feel to it.

Cool. It's how you would have designed it to have graphic design integrity!

 

[jim mcnamara]

Hmm. No. They are definitely not boxes, they are more like faint white square-ish lights that move around kind of in single file. Some lights go away or kind of fade out when I do subtraction, but they are really still there. So, if you think about 10 - 4, the closest 4 lights fade. Number one is always in front. His name is e.

Negative integers seem to upset the little lights, they turn a different color - usually
brownish. Larger numbers, like 100, turn off to one side and face to my left. When you have lots of numbers out there they don't slide around as much. Fewer numbers of lights seem to like to mess around more. Dates, distances, angles, program code -- all turn them on. Whenever I grocery shop, they are there because I keep a running total of the groceries in my head. They do not help at all.

I do a lot of programming. Calendrics frequently make the lights change. The lights for years 1582 and 1752 have a different sheen, they sort of ripple, for example. And the months in 1582 and 1752 do the same thing. Sep 1752 is very very faint and rippled.

When I was little I thought the little lights were real live things, but nobody else saw them. Especially the doctor my parents took me to see. I've always called the whatever-they-are eelights. I named two of them: e and eff. Hmm. I never tried to spell any of those words before. Since my doctor visits, the only person I've ever talked to about the eelights was my wife. Until now. It's nice to know they have a name. And I'm not nuts.

Anyway, they are kind of comforting, but are generally worse than usesless. As you can tell I think of them more like cute but annoying pets than anything else. I guess if they didn't move around I would not have thought of them as something alive when I was little. And now I'm too old to change.

 

[waht]

This is a longer quote than Gleick had in his book. Gleick doesn't have the first sentence, which pushes the interpretation more toward something unusual. Where did you find this version?

Gleick's descriptions of Feynman's thought processes all sound like yours (and Teslas) but there is no indication where he is getting this information. He doesn't attribute these descriptions to Feynman or anyone who knew him. I'm leary this could be Gleick hyping Feynman's thinking to fit the book title.

According to wiki this quote is taken directly from one of Feynman's books.

12. ^ Feynman, Richard. 1988. What Do You Care What Other People Think? New York: Norton. P. 59.

Is purple your usual color for "J" and reddish for "N" or are they different in the context of these functions?

Yes, they are regular synesthesia generated colors. It's just that a particular wording or grammar of these abstract concepts inherits the base colors in an irregular way.

Cool. It's how you would have designed it to have graphic design integrity!

Yes, indeed.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Hmm. No. They are definitely not boxes, they are more like faint white square-ish lights that move around kind of in single file. Some lights go away or kind of fade out when I do subtraction, but they are really still there. So, if you think about 10 - 4, the closest 4 lights fade. Number one is always in front. His name is e.

Fascinating that a number has a letter for a name. What happens with larger subtractions? Think of subtracting 256 from 876 and describe how the lights react.

Negative integers seem to upset the little lights, they turn a different color - usually
brownish.

This seems to come up a lot, that the elements of number forms and synesthesia have personalities and emotional reactions to some extent.

Larger numbers, like 100, turn off to one side and face to my left. When you have lots of numbers out there they don't slide around as much. Fewer numbers of lights seem to like to mess around more. Dates, distances, angles, program code -- all turn them on. Whenever I grocery shop, they are there because I keep a running total of the groceries in my head. They do not help at all.

All fascinating!

I do a lot of programming. Calendrics frequently make the lights change. The lights for years 1582 and 1752 have a different sheen, they sort of ripple, for example. And the months in 1582 and 1752 do the same thing. Sep 1752 is very very faint and rippled.

Just for the hell of it describe November 1963.

When I was little I thought the little lights were real live things, but nobody else saw them. Especially the doctor my parents took me to see. I've always called the whatever-they-are eelights. I named two of them: e and eff. Hmm. I never tried to spell any of those words before. Since my doctor visits, the only person I've ever talked to about the eelights was my wife. Until now. It's nice to know they have a name. And I'm not nuts.

I'm amazed at how well people learn to get by with something so vivid going on that no one else is aware of, and that you can't talk about. When I was having 100 deja vu's a day, I could, at least, tell people because almost everyone had had at least one and knew what I was talking about. Each number form is so personal and idiosyncratic you're guaranteed to never run into someone with the same, exact experience. It was quite remarkable for Galton to tease these reports out of people and realize they were all variations of the same thing, what ever that thing is, and that it's clearly a neurological glitch and not mental illness.


"e" is 1, "eff" is ?

Anyway, they are kind of comforting, but are generally worse than usesless. As you can tell I think of them more like cute but annoying pets than anything else. I guess if they didn't move around I would not have thought of them as something alive when I was little. And now I'm too old to change.

I once made a sock puppet for the 4 year old daughter of my best friend. Once she got used to working it and having dialogs with it, she started doing the same with anything that moved. Like, if her dad moved his big toe while napping on the couch, she'd start talking to it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

According to wiki this quote is taken directly from one of Feynman's books.

I found it, in the chapter called "It's as simple as One, Two, Three..."

The chapter is kind of remarkable because you see that Feynman was a natural neurologist. He discovered neuro-psychological testing, from scratch, all on his own.

"By that experience Tukey and I discovered that what goes on in different people's heads when they think they're doing the same thing - something as simple as counting - is different for different people. And we discovered that you can externally and objectively test how the brain works: you don't have to ask a person how he counts and rely on his own observations of himself; instead, you observe what he can and can't do while he counts. The test is absolute. There's no way to beat it; no way to fake it.

It's natural to explain an idea in terms of what you already have in your head. Concepts are piled on top of each other: this idea is taught in terms of that idea, and that idea is taught in terms of another idea, which comes from counting, which can be so different for different people.

I often think about that, especially when I'm teaching some esoteric technique such as integrating Bessel functions. When I see equations, I see the letters in colors - I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
p. 59

Feynman is quoted talking about this also in another book, No Ordinary Genius. He's highly alert to the fact that no two physicists are speaking the same language, and the "linguistic" differences are due to the fact each processes very simple things in different ways. Feynman felt he always had to "translate" himself, and that other physicists were usually not even aware there was a language problem, erroneously assuming that everyone thought the same way they did.

 

[Klockan3]

When I was in kindergarten I had colors and patterns for the days of the week, like wednesday was green with bobbles or something like that, but as I realized that those were just arbitrary traits created by my mind I stopped as it was useless.

 

[zoobyshoe]

When I was in kindergarten I had colors and patterns for the days of the week, like wednesday was green with bobbles or something like that, but as I realized that those were just arbitrary traits created by my mind I stopped as it was useless.

How "real" did they seem, though? Was there a three-dimensional, out in the space in front of you quality to it? Or was this just a conceptual association? Meaning: did the thought of Wednesday simply make you think of green, or did the thought of Wednesday cause a green shape with bobbles to appear in space front of you more like a hologram?

 

[fluidistic]

I don't know if I qualify. When I think about the number 6 I do "feel" a yellow color. I don't see the color nor anything special. It's just a feeling. I used to feel lots of colors for words and numbers. Now the effect has attenuated.
Strangely, I do not really like the number 6 and I do not like the color yellow. 3 might be a fair blue and seven a dark color. 4 is orange... oh yeah the sensation comes back when I think about it.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Think of subtracting 256 from 876 and describe how the lights react.

876 is back around behind 500 and near eff. Starting at e on backwards they just get dimmer and fuzzier. When I try to substract -- I can tell the dimming off stops somewhere back there, but it is of no real help. I can't count 'em back to 876 to find a remainder because somebody moves. And they really are hard to see anyway when they are far away.

describe November 1963

Light grayish, no ripples, just back behind a sort of a larger traffic jam pile which is the 1970's. eff is back there somewhere. The rippled ones tend to be special. Nov 63 is not.

eff is ?

Very slow moving, bigger than the others, bright white, and always at the back of one of the lines of lights. He/she/it kinda marks the end, most of the time. For large numbers like 100,000 there is no eff that I can see. Even larger numbers like trillions don't turn on any lights at all. Whenever the lights are there e is always in front, be it dates, time, numbers or whatever.

My parents truly thought I was having hallucinations or whatever they called seeing things that others didn't -- during the 1940's. The one lesson I got from that exercise was: do not talk about them.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't know if I qualify. When I think about the number 6 I do "feel" a yellow color. I don't see the color nor anything special. It's just a feeling. I used to feel lots of colors for words and numbers. Now the effect has attenuated.
Strangely, I do not really like the number 6 and I do not like the color yellow. 3 might be a fair blue and seven a dark color. 4 is orange... oh yeah the sensation comes back when I think about it.

If these "feelings" are always consistant, if 6, for instance always, invariably, "feels" a yellow color, then I'd speculate that you have a low grade grapheme -> color form of synesthesia.

From wikipedia:

"Grapheme → color synesthesia

In one of the most common forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes), are "shaded" or "tinged" with a color. While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red).

As a child, Pat Duffy told her Dad, "I realized that to make an R all I had to do was first write a P and draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line." Another grapheme synesthete says, "When I read, about five words around the exact one I'm reading are in color. It's also the only way I can spell. In elementary school I remember knowing how to spell the word 'priority' [with an "i" rather than an "e"] because ... an 'e' was out of place in that word because e's were yellow and didn't fit."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

This is different than a "number form", but obviously related.

 

[fluidistic]

Ok thanks for the info zoobyshoe. Interesting.

 

[zoobyshoe]

876 is back around behind 500 and near eff. Starting at e on backwards they just get dimmer and fuzzier. When I try to substract -- I can tell the dimming off stops somewhere back there, but it is of no real help. I can't count 'em back to 876 to find a remainder because somebody moves. And they really are hard to see anyway when they are far away.

I hope you don't mind my saying this is hilarious. They really are like pets, or a herd of bunnies, or a flock of pigeons.

Somehow, though, what all these things do is reveal something about the way the brain is structured. No one can definitely say what or where that structure is at this point. These things may be spelling out exactly how one part of the brain is wired to another; that sort of information. A lot has been uncovered about what the forms of visual Migraine aura reveal about the visual cortex, so there'll come a day when the anatomy lesson inherent in number forms is better understood.

Light grayish, no ripples, just back behind a sort of a larger traffic jam pile which is the 1970's. eff is back there somewhere. The rippled ones tend to be special. Nov 63 is not.

I picked Nov '63 for obvious reasons, and your answer indicates these things aren't governed by semantics: the "meaningfulness" of a date probably has no bearing on it's quality. A neuro-psychologist could determine if that's true by lengthier, better designed tests. The ones that ripple sound special according to some different criteria, not the historical significance of the date.

Very slow moving, bigger than the others, bright white, and always at the back of one of the lines of lights. He/she/it kinda marks the end, most of the time. For large numbers like 100,000 there is no eff that I can see. Even larger numbers like trillions don't turn on any lights at all. Whenever the lights are there e is always in front, be it dates, time, numbers or whatever.

Really fascinating. Eff sort of functions as a punctuation mark.

My parents truly thought I was having hallucinations or whatever they called seeing things that others didn't -- during the 1940's. The one lesson I got from that exercise was: do not talk about them.

Exactly. The same "lesson" is reported in all the stories of people with synesthesia. As children they assume everyone experiences stuff this way, then they find out no one around them does, and even think they are lying or crazy. They learn not to talk about it. It is really to Cytowic's credit that he proved it was real, and has successfully disseminated information about it so that people who have it know they're not crazy, and not alone.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ok thanks for the info zoobyshoe. Interesting.

You're welcome.

Just found the wiki has a better, dedicated article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme–color_synesthesia

 

[rhody]

Feynman is quoted talking about this also in another book, No Ordinary Genius. He's highly alert to the fact that no two physicists are speaking the same language, and the "linguistic" differences are due to the fact each processes very simple things in different ways. Feynman felt he always had to "translate" himself, and that other physicists were usually not even aware there was a language problem, erroneously assuming that everyone thought the same way they did.

zooby,

Very interesting, maybe that's why of all the physicists in the twentieth century I find Feynman the most interesting, physics aside, he approaches every problem fresh, acquiring the necessary background in a chosen field of study. Then, applying his skills at comprehending it using all of his senses (some of which have characteristics of synesthesia), examples of which have been discussed here. What has been driven home to me in the past few months with the discussion of cold can be hot and hot can be cold, leading to synesthesia and now this thread on number forms is a deeper appreciation of how unique each person we interact with daily is, and to not take for granted when discussing a complex subject, that the other party really "gets it". I have read many threads where discussion of physics simply breaks down because the posters did not choose the correct metaphor, visualization or mathematical construct that truly "connects" with the other. Feynman was a master communicator and could tailor his discussion to any audience at any level with seemingly effortless ease (I am sure it wasn't easy, but he made it look that way).

An http://amasci.com/feynman.html" from his friend Mark Kac:

There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre." - Mark Kac

Rhody...

P.S. zooby you will like this: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/...obbyist/#reader_2884490477"&tag=pfamazon01-20, right tab 26 times to see a few examples, the book was written by his daughter Michele.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Very interesting, maybe that's why of all the physicists in the twentieth century I find Feynman the most interesting, physics aside, he approaches every problem fresh, acquiring the necessary background in a chosen field of study. Then, applying his skills at comprehending it using all of his senses (some of which have characteristics of synesthesia), examples of which have been discussed here. What has been driven home to me in the past few months with the discussion of cold can be hot and hot can be cold, leading to synesthesia and now this thread on number forms is a deeper appreciation of how unique each person we interact with daily is, and to not take for granted when discussing a complex subject, that the other party really "gets it". I have read many threads where discussion of physics simply breaks down because the posters did not choose the correct metaphor, visualization or mathematical construct that truly "connects" with the other. Feynman was a master communicator and could tailor his discussion to any audience at any level with seemingly effortless ease (I am sure it wasn't easy, but he made it look that way).

Agreed on all points.

P.S. zooby you will like this: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/...obbyist/#reader_2884490477"&tag=pfamazon01-20, right tab 26 times to see a few examples, the book was written by his daughter Michele.

YIKES! $915.00!

I guess my problem making money as an artist is that I'm not a famous physicist. That's a pointer they don't teach you in Art School.

 

[206PiruBlood]

Is it normal for one to immediately see an image of what ever it is they are thinking about? And is it normal to be able to manipulate complicated images in your head at will? For example if I think of France, I can see a map of the world with France highlighted. I can zoom in on this map at or morph it into any other image, a dinosaur chasing a sandwich through the jungle perhaps. When I read the descriptions of others, that tends to be what I visualize. If I think number line, I see number line etc.

The difference seems to be that while I visualize at will, number forms occur spontaneously and remain continuously.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Is it normal for one to immediately see an image of what ever it is they are thinking about?

That's a good question. How normal it is depends on what you mean by "see". How vivid is that compared to actually seeing a real object or scene? When you "see" something you're imagining, is it very vivid, like watching a sort of film or video projected into the space in front of you?

When I "see" something, when I imagine it, it is a very low grade, dim, experience compared to seeing something real, and it is obviously "in my mind"; no chance of mistaking it for something real, in the external world. It's nothing like a film.

I can't say what's actually normal because people aren't tested for this and there's always an assumption everyone else thinks the way you do. One thing this thread demonstrates is that people who get clear indications they envision things differently than those around them learn not to talk about it.

The verb "to see" is pretty ambiguous and all purpose, and if you suddenly announced you "see" France as a dinosaur chasing a sandwich through a jungle in a conversation, I would automatically assume this was a sort of editorial metaphor that meant you think the French are way out of date and all they care about is their cuisine. Even if you clarified that this is an image you "see" in reaction to the image of a map of France I would still just assume you meant you'd created a cartoon-like mental image to embody your poor opinion of the French. It would not occur to me that your image was actually just an abstract chain of visual reactions to the shape of the map of France and I would also automatically assume it was as vivid, or I should say, non-vivid, as my own imaginings.

The difference seems to be that while I visualize at will, number forms occur spontaneously and remain continuously.

No, it's more than that. It sounds to me like you may have an exceptionally vivid sensory component to your imagination, and that you aren't aware everyone else is not the same. OR it could be you actually "see" things as dimly as I do, and don't realize how sensorily vivid synesthesia and Number Forms are. I can't really tell which it is.

I can imagine and describe some pretty extravagant surreal images and add any sensory information you want, but my experience of these images is actually very low grade. When Tesla "imagined" one of his inventions, however, it looked so real and three dimensional to him he could not understand why everyone else couldn't see it.

Now, I have had some hallucinations during sleep paralysis, and those were vivid! They seemed absolutely real: they passed every test of every sense for reality. So, I have direct experience of how vivid brain-created images can be. When I "imagine" or "see" something under normal circumstances, it is nothing like that. It is dim, vague, grainy, muted colors, no real spatial depth, and obviously "in my head".

 

[206PiruBlood]

The transition from France to dinosaur sandwiches was just an example of how I can manipulate images consciously; the two aren't necessarily related .

The images I see are difficult to describe in any meaningful way, but I guess all emotions and sensations are difficult to express. The images definitely appear to be in my mind and not projected in front of me. So in that respect it is nothing like a film; however, I do feel I can essentially watch a video in my mind.. How vivid these images are is difficult to convey.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The transition from France to dinosaur sandwiches was just an example of how I can manipulate images consciously; the two aren't necessarily related .

OK. Our French readers can rest easier.

The images I see are difficult to describe is any meaningful way, but I guess all emotions and sensations are difficult to express. The images definitely appear to be in my mind and not projected in front of me. So in that respect it is nothing like a film; however, I do feel I can essentially watch a video in my mind.. How vivid these images are is difficult to convey.

When I'm doing a lot of writing, as I have been lately here on PF, just about all my imaginings are verbal: I am primarily hearing my inner voice modeling sentences to express concepts. When I get away from writing I become more visual. When I go on a music listening binge, my "thinking" consists primarily of interminable fantasias in the style of the composer I've been listening to. (I'm also very prone to "ear worms": having the same song play over and over in my head.) There was a time I was heavily into films and film making, and, of course, then I was seeing "movies" in my head interminably.

Practicing a certain kind of mental modeling will lead to that becoming more vivid, I think.

 

[rhody]

I'm amazed at how well people learn to get by with something so vivid going on that no one else is aware of, and that you can't talk about. When I was having 100 deja vu's a day, I could, at least, tell people because almost everyone had had at least one and knew what I was talking about. Each number form is so personal and idiosyncratic you're guaranteed to never run into someone with the same, exact experience.

When I'm doing a lot of writing, as I have been lately here on PF, just about all my imaginings are verbal: I am primarily hearing my inner voice modeling sentences to express concepts. When I get away from writing I become more visual. When I go on a music listening binge, my "thinking" consists primarily of interminable fantasias in the style of the composer I've been listening to. (I'm also very prone to "ear worms": having the same song play over and over in my head.) There was a time I was heavily into films and film making, and, of course, then I was seeing "movies" in my head interminably.

Practicing a certain kind of mental modeling will lead to that becoming more vivid, I think.

Zooby,

First, deja-vu. I read this in a couple of your posts awhile ago, and wanted to ask about it, you stated most people could relate to the experience. I have a few questions, first, when did it start, what brings on the experience, can you turn it off, and have they (the deja vu moments, up to 100 per day) been part of any real past experiences, or just an imagined ones ? Finally, what is your clinical opinion of this ? I could have researched it beforehand but would rather hear it from you, areas of the brain involved, etc...

Second, what is going on with you in the second paragraph above. You also said when in "listening mode" when listening to music you hear it repeated in your head (ear worms), and describe a similar tendency when you write, shifting modes. How do you practice this to make it more vivid ?

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

First, deja-vu. I read this in a couple of your posts awhile ago, and wanted to ask about it, you stated most people could relate to the experience. I have a few questions, first, when did it start, what brings on the experience, can you turn it off, and have they (the deja vu moments, up to 100 per day) been part of any real past experiences, or just an imagined ones ? Finally, what is your clinical opinion of this ? I could have researched it beforehand but would rather hear it from you, areas of the brain involved, etc...

I can't talk about deja vu's here or I'll hijack my own thread. I could write a book.

Second, what is going on with you in the second paragraph above. You also said when in "listening mode" when listening to music you hear it repeated in your head (ear worms), and describe a similar tendency when you write, shifting modes. How do you practice this to make it more vivid ?

The point of that paragraph was just to say that whenever I'm preoccupied with concepts my "thinking" (the activity I'm aware of going on in my mind) consists primarily of speech. When I have been listening to a lot of music, it consists of music, when I have been preoccupied with visual images (art, photography, movies) it consists of visual images.

So, when I hear a person say they are primarily a "visual" or an "auditory" person, I think all it means is that the particular sense modality they mention is really just the one they are currently preoccupied with.

An "earworm" is when you get a song "stuck in your head" (i.e. it is not a musical hallucination, or anything synesthetic, if that's what you were wondering).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm

I find that if I accidentally hear a song I really like, it may become replayed over and over in my head a lot in the next few days until it becomes an annoyance. It's something you try to get rid of, not make more vivid.

 

[DaveC426913]

If these "feelings" are always consistant, if 6, for instance always, invariably, "feels" a yellow color, then I'd speculate that you have a low grade grapheme -> color form of synesthesia.

When I was young, I thought I had this. I had a strong association between numbers and colours.

As I've grown older, I've come to conclude that it was just a strong association with a my colouring book whose cover had the numbers 1 to 10 in big multi-coloured pie slices.

 

[zoobyshoe]

When I was young, I thought I had this. I had a strong association between numbers and colours.

As I've grown older, I've come to conclude that it was just a strong association with a my colouring book whose cover had the numbers 1 to 10 in big multi-coloured pie slices.

Cytowic always cites the example of Nabokov, who, as a toddler, didn't like the blocks his parents gave him because the colors were "all wrong". If you were synesthetic, therefore, that coloring book ought to have bothered you. The chances of the colors coinciding with someone's syesthetic colors are not high.

edit: Synesthesia is genetic, but parents and their children never share the same color associations. Nabokov married a syesthete, and their son is synesthetic, but all three have different grapheme -> color associations. Cytowic cites a family in which the father and two children were always arguing which associations were "right", while the mother, a non-synesthete, sat quietly bewildered.

 

[croesoswallt]

I was compelled to sign up to your forum just to respond to this thread!

I was searching on google for "what shape do you imagine the days of the week?" and this was pretty much the only thing that came up, I'm glad it was on a physics forum rather than a psychology forum, it seems appropriate.

I experience these forms and was aware that other people did, but thought probably more than 1/10. It does seem surprising that most people don't conceive of things in this manner, it seems like the very nature of abstract concepts demands this sort of personal system.

I often ask people what colour they envision the days of the week to be, I think people without these numberform tendencies can do that pretty easily, or it is a more readily available form to the public mind maybe through culture (blue monday, ruby tuesday etc.!).

I see the weeks flowing from right to left
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY (white)

They are contained within the months somehow like a square though in a perfectly linear fashion. The months are contained in the year as a U shape, with a gap between January and December which is simultaneously huge and negligible, only certain months have colour, though the ones that do not each have their own brand of uncolour.

The years and decades progress directly upwards save a small curve which simultaneously travels in opposite directions, like a fourth dimensional double helix, with another overall trend slightly to the right. The previous years extend to my bottom left twisting and turning in unfathomable ways through the middle ages, the epochs seem to flatten out while expanding infinitely.

The numerical system is very similar to the diagrams early in the thread and some of the descriptions which followed. 1-10 is a gentle slope of about 12 degrees to the right, yet it seems to end at a place more like 70 degrees. 11 and 12 merge with one another then 13-20 curves to an almost perpendicular line. The tens of numbers extend to 100 in a straight line which also has bends. The thirties are green, the forties are blue and green, the 50s are red, 60s green, 70s yellow, 80s blue and red, 90s mucky yellow.

I'm also a professional musician, I teach a bit of music theory and try and encorporate some elements of patterns and forms to harmonic concepts (which of course already have some standardised visual forms) to my teaching method.

 

[Chi Meson]

I have come to wonder about the "1 in 10" figure for these number forms. I brought this topic up in all of my classes this past week, and when describing the phenomenon, I essentially got over 50 blank stares. One person gave a "maybe, kinda" response which might have been a visual association with the "number line" as learned in school. It certainly wasn't the number forms as described earlier with the bends and turns.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I was compelled to sign up to your forum just to respond to this thread!......I'm also a professional musician, I teach a bit of music theory and try and encorporate some elements of patterns and forms to harmonic concepts (which of course already have some standardised visual forms) to my teaching method.

Thanks for joining and posting!

I wonder if you could elucidate the degree of "realness" these things have.

The most information you're going to find is most likely in the book Wednesday is Indigo Blue. Amazon has it. I'm reading it now and the authors pay a good amount of attention to number forms.

 

[Moonbear]

A "number form" is an involuntary chart, of sorts, that pops into some people's minds when they consider things like calendars (months, days), times of day, the alphabet, or even just numbers from 1 to infinity.

These "charts" have their elements grouped rather idiosynchratically from other people's perspective but to the person experiencing the "Number Form" they make absolute sense and seem inevitable. People refer to these charts all the time and visualize them being out in space around them. For some people they're colorless, but for others they are colored and may have some element of motion to them.

"The pattern or 'Form' in which the numerals are seen is by no means the same in different persons, but assumes the most grotesque variety of shapes, which run in all sorts of angles, bends, curves, and zigzags...
...These forms...are stated in all cases to have been in existence, so far as the earlier numbers in the Form are concerned, as long back as the memory extends; they come 'into view quite independently' of the will, and their shape and position...are nearly invariable."
-Galton 1907

These charts are said to be indispensable to the people who experience and use them and they are surprised when they find out everyone doesn't have the same thing going on. In fact, it's estimated only one-in-ten people has them.

I, myself, don't experience this, and I only ever heard about it the first time a couple weeks ago. What's interesting is that, apparently, Feynman had it, and saw colored equations projected into space in front of him.

Any of you have "Number Forms"?

Nope, not I. When I think of something like dates or a calendar, I think of it in the standard calendar grid form.

Though, associating colors with numbers would be a form of synesthesia, which is indeed fairly rare. I found out only recently that a very good childhood friend of mine experiences this...and I always thought he was absolutely brilliant with numbers (he has a Ph.D. in physics). He didn't admit it when he was younger because he didn't realize until much older that this wasn't the way everyone "saw" numbers. No wonder he got me hooked on highlighters in the 8th grade!

 

[zoobyshoe]

I have come to wonder about the "1 in 10" figure for these number forms. I brought this topic up in all of my classes this past week, and when describing the phenomenon, I essentially got over 50 blank stares. One person gave a "maybe, kinda" response which might have been a visual association with the "number line" as learned in school. It certainly wasn't the number forms as described earlier with the bends and turns.

So far, I have to agree. I have to think that if it were as common as 1 in 10 someone I've met in my 55 years would have let something slip in conversation that would have stood out.

This thread's had over 1500 views with only a handful of positive responses. If the stats are correct this could mean that people remain too shy, or, it could mean people who experience number forms tend to veer away from the sciences because of the maths involved: everyone's said they tend to get in the way. Really, though, I suspect the statistics are incorrect.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Nope, not I. When I think of something like dates or a calendar, I think of it in the standard calendar grid form.

Though, associating colors with numbers would be a form of synesthesia, which is indeed fairly rare.

Well, the researchers are saying 1 in 23 people has some form of it! (Synesthesia, I mean.)

Associating colors with numbers and letters (graphemes) is one of the very most common forms.

I found out only recently that a very good childhood friend of mine experiences this...and I always thought he was absolutely brilliant with numbers (he has a Ph.D. in physics). He didn't admit it when he was younger because he didn't realize until much older that this wasn't the way everyone "saw" numbers.

You ought to invite him to post and describe it.

No wonder he got me hooked on highlighters in the 8th grade!

Wow! I just realized highlighters are part of their plot to take over!

 

[rhody]

I was compelled to sign up to your forum just to respond to this thread!

croesoswallt,

Welcome to PF, all forums have a high signal to noise ratio, and are monitored and mentored, which is the reason an educated crowd hangs out here. Maybe this is a first, but I doubt it, I am sure you have found zooby's insight and descriptions funny, thought provoking and one of the reasons this thread still has plenty of life left. Zooby's suggestion that Cytowic's research into synesthesia would be of interest is what tweaked my curiosity to read "The Man Who Tasted Shapes". I don't have synesthesia, however think there is much more to learn regarding the mingling of the senses. People with the different forms allow scientists to study parts of the brain with unparalleled precision. I know more books, possibly lectures on this amazing subject are in store for me.

Rhody...

 

[Chi Meson]

Interesting! Explain about the shapes, which are particularly intriguing because it seems to go both ways.

This one was hard to explain, but I just had an episode last night which I was able to recognize. My son had lost one of the buttons to his watch, and it was on the floor of his room. I am and have always been a good "finder of small things." It was a metallic button (it fell out of a very cheap watch) and it was lying on a taupe carpet among various bits of boy's room detritus. While scanning the floor, I was aware that I was kind of "listening" for it, just as much as looking. As various things came into view, little sounds such as "thud" "zip" "nik" "vum" (not exactly those, but that's a close an approximation as I can get), but In retrospect, I "recognized" the correct sound when I saw it: "bimp," same as a ball bearing from a bicycle hub.

I have always found it very distracting, to the point of great confusion, if I am trying to find something when there is noise around me. Not the best combination with two boys, 5 and 7 years old.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This one was hard to explain, but I just had an episode last night which I was able to recognize. My son had lost one of the buttons to his watch, and it was on the floor of his room. I am and have always been a good "finder of small things." It was a metallic button (it fell out of a very cheap watch) and it was lying on a taupe carpet among various bits of boy's room detritus. While scanning the floor, I was aware that I was kind of "listening" for it, just as much as looking. As various things came into view, little sounds such as "thud" "zip" "nik" "vum" (not exactly those, but that's a close an approximation as I can get), but In retrospect, I "recognized" the correct sound when I saw it: "bimp," same as a ball bearing from a bicycle hub.

I have always found it very distracting, to the point of great confusion, if I am trying to find something when there is noise around me. Not the best combination with two boys, 5 and 7 years old.

This is amazing! It gives me a spooky Tommy feeling, like you could play pinball by sense of smell.

What sound would a pinball make? A deeper, lower pitched "bimp"?

 

[Chi Meson]

It really doesn't seem to work when I look at anything to "find out what sound it makes." I need to be in a state of concentration, and things have to be quiet, and I essentially notice it only after some degree of repetition.

When I try to "hear" things, I'm too conscious about the whole thing, and I'm aware that I might be projecting a sound on a thing rather than experiencing a sound.

It's extremely obvious though, when I play the game "Set." Finding cards with combinations of color, quantity, shading and shapes... it's freaking cacophonous .

Edit: I just realized something, while thinking about the "pinball" question: There is no pitch to these noises. It's all monotone.

 

[rhody]

I need to be in a state of concentration, and things have to be quiet, and I essentially notice it only after some degree of repetition.

Just a quick question, when you say quiet, you mean like quiet with no background noise, or quiet in your state of mind ? You mention repetition, like it doesn't happen at first but only when you relax, and the sensation starts to flow ? Do you notice it more intense when the room is quiet and after you are really tired or have been drinking ? (that is if you do drink ?)

Finally, can you cause it to vanish at will, and if so, what thing or combination of things remove the sensation ?

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

It really doesn't seem to work when I look at anything to "find out what sound it makes." I need to be in a state of concentration, and things have to be quiet, and I essentially notice it only after some degree of repetition.

When I try to "hear" things, I'm too conscious about the whole thing, and I'm aware that I might be projecting a sound on a thing rather than experiencing a sound.

It's extremely obvious though, when I play the game "Set." Finding cards with combinations of color, quantity, shading and shapes... it's freaking cacophonous .

Truly amazing. You might want to get that book, Wednesday is Indigo Blue. There are a few reports from similar people who "hear" what are essentially visual experiences, with the same disorienting result when there's too many stimuli.

 

[waht]

It's extremely obvious though, when I play the game "Set." Finding cards with combinations of color, quantity, shading and shapes... it's freaking cacophonous

Can you find any patterns by sound if you know what sound to look for? or is the noise just random?

 

[Chi Meson]

Just a quick question, when you say quiet, you mean like quiet with no background noise, or quiet in your state of mind ? You mention repetition, like it doesn't happen at first but only when you relax, and the sensation starts to flow ? Do you notice it more intense when the room is quiet and after you are really tired or have been drinking ? (that is if you do drink ?)

Finally, can you cause it to vanish at will, and if so, what thing or combination of things remove the sensation ?

Rhody...

I'm trying to separate what actually happens from what I think ought to happen. I am trying hard not to project here, but it is clear that the easiest way to get this to stop is to start concentrating on it. To get it going, I need to concentrate on something else.

So by quiet, I did mean "externally quiet." But as I also need to be in a state of concentration, I guess I also mean "internally quiet." Such as assembling a model or putting together a design from a building toy. K'nex for example. I'd be looking through the big box for 24 small green rods from a colossal assortment of other shapes and colors. So I'm sorting and picking, and about halfway through I'd be aware of the sound of the piece I was collecting. Also when a single, peculiar piece is needed, I can find it fairly quickly and I know it's the right piece because the shape and sound matched that of the one in the picture-instructions.

I don't drink much anymore, but in recollection, I don't think that it enhances the sensations. The same for being tired. Since both of these situations are going the wrong way from "state of concentration," I'd have to say that concentration is key.

 

[Moonbear]

Well, the researchers are saying 1 in 23 people has some form of it! (Synesthesia, I mean.)

That still seems like an overestimate to me. Though, if my friend's experience is typical, we may simply not hear from all the people affected by it since they either 1) don't realize what they experience is not normal or 2) don't want to share their experience out of fear of being considered abnormal.

You ought to invite him to post and describe it.

I would, but he's pretty busy with raising a kid and now getting back into a musical career. He also recently shared that musical notes also have colors to him. So, yeah, I'm also very curious if using multiple senses has helped him learn these subjects more than those of us who haven't used these associations to learn these subjects.

Wow! I just realized highlighters are part of their plot to take over!

LOL! We were in school when highlighters and colored inks were first being marketed (aside from red ink, of course). He was part of my lab group then, and we all had lots of fun with highlighters and competed for who could get the highest grade over 100% in the class (each exam had an extra credit question). It was actually very useful to me, even if others cringe at the abuse of highlighters. I used to go through my notes and highlight content very systematically. Each color meant something different for me. Nowadays, I couldn't even remember the significance of colors to give an example, but I have seen this with my med students too. Some of them really struggle their first year when they try to do like their classmates and take notes on their computers. For them, I've found that they are usually the students who took notes in multiple colors as an undergraduate, and do very well when I simply suggest that they ignore their classmates and go back to using colored pens to take notes in class.

 

[waht]

I found it, in the chapter called "It's as simple as One, Two, Three..."

The chapter is kind of remarkable because you see that Feynman was a natural neurologist. He discovered neuro-psychological testing, from scratch, all on his own.

What Do You Care What Other People Think p. 59

I know this is a long shot, but is it well established now that Feynman had synesthesia based on this reference? At least Gleick was pretty sure of it.

Feynman is quoted talking about this also in another book, No Ordinary Genius. He's highly alert to the fact that no two physicists are speaking the same language, and the "linguistic" differences are due to the fact each processes very simple things in different ways. Feynman felt he always had to "translate" himself, and that other physicists were usually not even aware there was a language problem, erroneously assuming that everyone thought the same way they did.

Wouldn't this be also true of other great speakers, teachers or story tellers? Can't think of a non-physicists off the top my head, but Neil Degrass Tyson seems to have this ability. He can explain what a black hole is to an 8 year old, and yet many adults find the same explanation fascinating, and thrilling.

 

[waht]

Some of them really struggle their first year when they try to do like their classmates and take notes on their computers. For them, I've found that they are usually the students who took notes in multiple colors as an undergraduate, and do very well when I simply suggest that they ignore their classmates and go back to using colored pens to take notes in class.

Most of my notes look like pages from children's coloring books. Just couple of days ago, I bought a new 12 color uni-ball pen set. My notes and calculations are in black, and then I circle, box, underline or connect various parts of my work with lines, and curves of different colors. Sometimes I shade them too.

 

[rhody]

I know this is a long shot, but is it well established now that Feynman had synesthesia based on this reference? At least Gleick was pretty sure of it.

waht,

I mentioned this before, I believe James Gleick was aware that Feynman was unique in many ways described in previous posts. I don't believe he was aware that Feynman had what Cytowic defines as synesthesia because Gleck published his book in 1992, while Cytowic first published his in 1993, so unless he knew him there would be no way for him to be aware of synesthesia. See my original comments about Feynman in post #53.

Rhody...

 

[lisab]

I haven't followed this thread closely, so maybe this has already been discussed. But does it have to always be numbers?

A woman I used to work with had a grandson who was about 4 or 5 years old. She had all his "masterpiece" art work on the fridge, of course, including several that featured the alphabet. She noticed that for each alphabet, every letter was a different crayon color, and it was always the same sequence of colors! He'd made these sequences over a very long period of time, and rarely in the kitchen where he would have been able to see his old ones to follow the pattern.

Also not sure if it's pertinent, but the kid was in the process of being evaluated for autism. I have no idea how that came out, though.

 

[rhody]

I haven't followed this thread closely, so maybe this has already been discussed. But does it have to always be numbers?

A woman I used to work with had a grandson who was about 4 or 5 years old. She had all his "masterpiece" art work on the fridge, of course, including several that featured the alphabet. She noticed that for each alphabet, every letter was a different crayon color, and it was always the same sequence of colors! He'd made these sequences over a very long period of time, and rarely in the kitchen where he would have been able to see his old ones to follow the pattern.

Also not sure if it's pertinent, but the kid was in the process of being evaluated for autism. I have no idea how that came out, though.

Lisa,

From the synessthesia thread, my https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=393977&page=6" colors can apply to quite a few things:

1. Mingling of two or more of the sensations (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) in a cross modal fashion. Most commonly reported is color and hearing. Rarer types: page 232 from Dr Sean Day's study of 365 cases, all in percentages:

Note: The first group are grapheme associations, the rest, rarer still are mingled sense sensations:

colored time units: 19.2
colored musical sounds 14.5
colored general sounds 12.1
colored phonemes 9.6
colored musical notes 10.4
colored tastes 6.3
colored personalities 4.4
colored pain 4.4 (woah, I would like to hear from someone with this trait)
colored odors 5.8
colored temperature 2.2
colored touch 1.9

As you see my note above: I would love for someone who experiences colored pain to describe it, I imagine though, they would only experience it if they were sitting quietly reading and then something fell (without them hearing it) and bopped them on the head, or other part of their body.

Funny, you should mention color stimulation, I was going to ask about color pain eventually anyway, thanks, you beat me to it.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

I know this is a long shot, but is it well established now that Feynman had synesthesia based on this reference? At least Gleick was pretty sure of it.

It's not established at all. All there is is one quote that sounds very much like he's describing a synesthetic experience. Cytowic, for reasons unknown to me, has decided to declare Feynman had a number form. There's really no indication I can see that he did. If anything,the quote indicates he had a bit of Teslavision, like you.

Wouldn't this be also true of other great speakers, teachers or story tellers? Can't think of a non-physicists off the top my head, but Neil Degrass Tyson seems to have this ability. He can explain what a black hole is to an 8 year old, and yet many adults find the same explanation fascinating, and thrilling.

It's not a matter of being able to explain yourself to an untrained person. Feynman realized no two physicists are talking the same language. He had to both translate what they were saying to his tongue, and then what he was saying into theirs. At the same time he'd try to teach them some of his language.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I haven't followed this thread closely, so maybe this has already been discussed. But does it have to always be numbers?

A number form can be formed around anything that is a sequence, including the alphabet. Cytowic mentions a woman who has a number form for the relative heights of people she knows, for relative shoe sizes, and for relative salaries. Many people seem to have them for the calendar and the hours of the day.

A woman I used to work with had a grandson who was about 4 or 5 years old. She had all his "masterpiece" art work on the fridge, of course, including several that featured the alphabet. She noticed that for each alphabet, every letter was a different crayon color, and it was always the same sequence of colors! He'd made these sequences over a very long period of time, and rarely in the kitchen where he would have been able to see his old ones to follow the pattern.

This sounds more like Grapheme -> Color Synesthesia than a number form, but it depends on whether the letters have a consistant, but idiosyncratic positioning relative to each other.