Numbers have taken over my life.

It begins in the morning when a single number determines what I'll wear that day.  In the summer I use the heat index, and in the winter, the wind chill factor.  From that point on, my day fills with numbers.

The information revolution alone has quadrupled the numbers in my life.  I have three telephone numbers (two at home and one at my office) as well as pager, cell phone, and fax numbers.  To access the University of Illinois Library computer system, I've memorized a 15-digit ID number.

No wonder I nearly lost it when the Post Office added four digits to the zip code.  But I held on—until I got that second phone line.

After the telephone installers left, I stared at the new number.  Dazed, I went to our old phone to call a friend.  Just as I finished dialing, the new phone rang.  I hung up and rushed to answer it, only to find no one on the other end.  I returned to the old phone.  Again, just as I finished dialing, the new phone rang. 

Suddenly I realized, "I'm calling my new phone number."  It had lodged itself in my overloaded mind.

I got my first hint that numbers would take over my life in third grade.  My teacher screened Donald in Mathmagic Land.  While not great cinema, Donald Duck showed how math permeates music, sports, and the arts.  I should have been alarmed when he quacked on about the Greek Pythagoras and his theorem.  Donald Duck clearly showed that numbers are my Western heritage.

I've since learned—from an alarming little book by Alfred Crosby, The Measure of Reality—that the power of numbers helped turn the backward tribes of Europe, my ancestors, into global powerhouses.  Europe trailed, in the 9th century, far behind other regions. The Muslims, for example, had already excelled in mathematics and mechanical innovation, and China had pioneered steel making and gunpowder.

Yet, by the end of the Middle Ages, the Western Europeans ruled the world.  Portugal had expanded west to Brazil and east to the Indian Ocean; Spain claimed the Americas; and the Netherlands had developed an Asian Empire.  By the 19th century, Western Europe's domination reached its apex in Queen Victoria's empire, over which the sun truly never set.  How did these backward 9th century Europeans accomplish all this?

The answer—one that causes me daily anxiety—is numbers.  Or better put: quantifying the world by numbers.  The West brought together mathematics and measurement to record reality and thus, the power to control it.

Clocks were the first way that Europeans quantified the world.  The chime of the town clock chopped the day into numbered segments, calling out the time to start or stop trading or go to church.  This was a sharp contrast to days marked only by sunrise and sunset.  Such quantification spread to all aspects of life.

Numbers affected music, armies, art, and navigation.  The free-form Georgian chants of the 9th century gave way to music with a rich meter controlled by a clock.  It was a short step from regimented music to regiments and powerful armies.  The political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli noted that just as a dancing man "keeps time with the music, [and] cannot make a false step; so an army that properly observes the beat of the drums cannot easily be disordered."

Paintings from the 9th century look odd to our eye; they seem flat and lifeless.  It was the use of numbers that gave artists the power to put perspective into their paintings.  With numbers, artists could create realistic pictures. 

From these geometrically accurate paintings evolved maps filled with gridlines—lines that divided space into numbers.  The maps overflowed with compass bearings, depth measurements, tide tables, and even the times pirates might be expected.  These number-laden maps guided sailors across the seas to conquer new worlds.

Bookkeepers and bean counters—armed with numbers—followed the sailors.  These merchants and bureaucrats used double-entry bookkeeping to control commerce, industry, and government.  Double-entry bookkeeping doesn't sound like a world-changing event, yet it allowed a merchant to "picture" the reality of his or her business.  Bookkeeping was an essential tool, or quantification, that allowed Western Europe to rule the world.

The poet Wystan Auden summed up the result of all these numbers for the West: we live in societies "to which the study of that which can be weighed and measured is a consuming love."

Not to me—tomorrow my alarm clock will screech and command me to divide my day into bits and pieces.  But when I rise, I never feel like following my Western heritage and conquering the world.