"Throughout man's history there has been a close connection between the natural numbers and the activities of the divine Creator. The natural numbers have always been seen by some at least in every civilization to be symbolic of deep esoteric religious beliefs. The Babylonians had a hierarchy of sixty gods each of which was associated with one of the first sixty natural numbers. ...In ancient India, we find religious significance assigned to each of the first 101 numbers, and the Mayan civilization the first thirteen numbers all represented gods. There is something of a parallel in other sciences. Astronomy grew from astrology and chemistry from alchemy. It is therefore not surprising that number theory, first developed by the Pythagoreans, was associated with their religious beliefs and practices."
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Sources
Graham Flegg, Numbers: Their History and Meaning (1983)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_mysticism
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Mathematics and mysticism
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