On January 24, 2019 at 20:31, davidcasemore said...
The reason we have ten fingers (I'm counting a thumb as a finger) and ten toes is so we can easily work with divisions of ten. God figured, in all its wisdom, to give us these groups of ten digits because it assumed that the entire world would be smart enough to come up with, and use, the Metric System. So much for all-powerful and all-knowing!
I don't think it went im that direction. I think we got, developed, were blessed with, were forced to have, whatever you want to call it, ten fingers and ten toes, and it was then natural to use them to count, so we developed counting systems based on what we were carrying around:ten digits. Hell, the word is even DIGIT! (I can't say why twenty wasn't used.)
Apparent, but not, non sequitur:
There used to be a free engineering publication in Southern California, printed on newsprint paper. One of the features was the caption contest. Here's one of the artworks and its winning caption, from the early 80s:
The Sales Department Counting to 21
