August 2, 2006
Coincidences IV Posted by John Steele Gordon at 05:25 PM EST Actually quite a big deal was made out of the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. It was, after all, the first “round number” anniversary. Both Adams and Jefferson (being two of the three signers still alive; Charles Carroll was the third) received numerous invitations to attend celebrations of the event. They were unable, of course, to accept any. Thomas Jefferson’s last public statement, in fact, was a letter to the mayor of Washington, written on June 24, regretting his inability to attend the festivities planned in the capital. He then predicted the political future of the world, with considerable accuracy.
“May it be to the world,” he wrote, “what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. . . . All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. These are the grounds of hope for others; for ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”
Not bad for someone only 10 days from death. The letter was widely printed.
By the way, I misquoted John Adams the other day. He didn’t say, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.” He said “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
Fred Smoler is quite correct that flukes must happen now and then, even the flukiest of flukes if enough time and enough trials are available, and therefore shouldn’t be surprising. But they are, and people respond powerfully to them. Even he admits that a pat straight flush on the very first hand of a poker game was a WOW! event in his life.
Equally, people love round numbers. There is nothing more magical about the Dow Jones passing 10,000 than about its passing, say, 9,786. But the last time the Dow hit 10,000 I was invited on to The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the event. In the days of mechanical odometers, children loved to watch them roll over to a big round number, not infrequently making driving the car difficult in the process.
Why there should be this human fascination with flukes and big round numbers, I have no idea. It’s a question for psychologists, not historians. But there’s no more point in decrying it than in decrying any other part of human nature.
He writes “Mr. Gordon, who seems to read a lot of nineteenth-century fiction, will probably recall a disturbing and brutally funny scene in War and Peace where Pierre Bezukhov massages numbers until he finds the meaning he is looking for.” Today, Pierre would probably be a politician, doing exactly the same thing. Why political reporters never, ever seem to notice when they are being statistically duped is another great mystery of human nature.
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