George Miller, who wrote the almost-magical essay “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”, died this past week. The essay appeared in the Psychological Review(vol. 101, no. 2, 1956, pp. 343-352). It begins:
“My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistence with which this number plagues me is far more than a random accident. There is, to quote a famous senator, a design behind it, some pattern governing its appearances. Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution…”
This reminds me of a theme in Robert Anton Wilson’s early novels, The Law of Fives. A student of the occult is told early on that all things are related to the number 5, shown a few examples, and then turned loose. They immediately find endless examples. At the right moment in their path to enlightenment, they are given a fuller statement of the law: all things are related to the number 5, given enough ingenuity on the part of the relator.
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