There's Plenty of Mystique about 3
By Leonard Wibberley
First Published in December 31, 1978
4/29/2016
It is generally agreed that everything runs in threes and there is something mystical about three, which I would like to examine with you for a moment if you have the time.
“Third time lucky” is a common enough expression and surely it is based upon human experience, else how would we have come to accept it? But during the First World War it came to be known that it was very unlucky to light three cigarettes from one match. The reason was that one of the three using the match was likely to be shot, but then that wasn’t strictly a matter of luck, for the lighted match, burning so long, gave a sniper time to zero in.
But why, I ask you, do we give three cheers when there is something to celebrate, why do races and other contests start at the count of three, why are we always asked to give three good reasons why something should or should not be done, and why are auctions always decided on the third rap of the hammer?
The fascination with three goes far back in human history and to my mind it is significant that we recognize three persons in the Divinity. This, as you know, was explained to the fifth century Celts of Ireland by St. Patrick who showed them a three-leaved shamrock by way of illustration. But the Celts of Ireland, like many primitive peoples, didn’t need such an explanation for three had a deep significance in their own culture. Thus in their mythology they had The Three Tales of Sorrowful Telling, the Three Sons of Uisliu, the Three Shouts on the Hill, the Three Signs of a Fop and the Three Sources of the World’s Increase to which might be added the Three Glories of a Gathering and the Three Keys that Unlock Thoughts. Maybe you’d like an explanation of these.
The Three Sources of the World’s Increase were the womb of a woman, the udder of a cow and the clay of the potter. The Three Signs of a Fop are not to my mind as good — the track of his comb in his hair, the track of his teeth in his food, and the track of his stick behind him. Better, I think, the Three Keys that Unlock Thoughts: drunkeness, trustfulness, and love, and perhaps the Three Glories of a Gathering: a beautiful wife, a good horse and a swift hound, though in these urban days we are confined to the first and are thus somewhat diminished.
Mathematically three is a terrible nuisance and might better not have been thought of. It is impossible to extract the square root of three for the thing keeps going on and on, and it is not only impossible to trisect an angle, that is divide it into three equal parts (except by good luck) but it is also impossible to solve The Problem of Three Bodies.
The Problem of Three Bodies is not a classic case of murder, but a puzzle involving the motion of three bodies moving under the influence of their mutual gravitation — and I got that definition out of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
An example would be the motion of the moon around the Earth as influenced by the gravity of the sun and there is no general solution to the thing. I’ll admit it isn’t something that is going to keep me awake at night but it is just an example of how irritating three is.
Part of the mystery surrounding three may lie in the fact that we are all confined in a three-dimensional prison. By that I mean that we cannot think in anything more than three dimensions — length, height and depth. Anything else we come up with turns out to be a combination of these. Everything we build, everything we draw, everything we envision has those three dimensions and so all our measuring is based on them.
Mathematics beyond the simple arithmetic required to keep a checkbook in reasonable shape has always bedeviled me, but I once came on a book of mathematics for idiots in which a four-dimensional and even five-dimensional geometry was discussed. There was a picture of a sphere constructed I think, in a four-dimensional geometry and it looked like a wire wastepaper basket. Since I already had a wire wastepaper basket, I naturally did not proceed any further.
I am left wondering what mystical impulse decided that this column should appear three times a week and it is always about three copy pages long.
I’ll give you three guesses.
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