Social Context of the Number 42 (Jim Melnyk, 4/15/2013)
In Douglas Adams’ book, The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the meaning of the Universe is summed up as
“42.”
“In the first novel and radio
series, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the
Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything
from the supercomputer, Deep Thought,
specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to
compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42.
Deep Thought points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings
who instructed it never actually knew what the Question was.
Douglas
Adams was asked many times why he chose the number 42. Many theories were
proposed, including that 42 is 101010 in binary code,
that light refracts off water by 42 degrees to create a rainbow, that light
requires 10−42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton.[6]
Adams rejected them all. On 3 November 1993, he gave an answer[7]
on alt.fan.douglas-adams:
The
answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an
ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my
desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of
story.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_to_The_Ultimate_Question_of_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything#Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life.2C_the_Universe.2C_and_Everything_.2842.29
Still,
today is April 15, which Major League Baseball has set aside as Jackie Robinson
Day. Jackie, who broke MLB’s color barrier
in 1947, wore the number 42. Several
years ago when MLB had set aside a day to honor Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr. went
to the Commissioner and asked permission to wear number 42, which had been
retired by Baseball, for his day’s game. In the movie, 42, just out this month, there's a scene (historically accurate) recalling the moment in Cincinnati when Pee Wee Reese walks over to Jackie Robinson at First Base and puts his arm around his teammate to show his support. "Maybe tomorrow," says Reese, "we'll all wear 42, so they won't tell us apart." I haven't been able to identify if Reese actually said it, but it certainly has come true. Now everyone wears number 42 on Jackie Robinson Day.
What
for the author was an indiscriminate number, for MLB and many others, carries a
meaning of full inclusion and common humanity in the midst of diversity.
Maybe
Douglas Adams, author of A Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy, accidently hit on the true meaning of the universe – Oneness.
