The museum a collection of sentences about the ways numbers are
understood by hypothetical groups of people each of which lives
in a hypothetical elsewhere. When you enter, you are in an empty
room except for the sentences on small strips of paper which are
arrayed on the walls. The Collection For the people of A,
numbers are intensifiers. They are printed on little round white
signs glued to sticks. In the course of communication, people
hold up numbers. Sometimes they are used in the midst of words
to emphasize different syllables and the way in which they scan;
other times in the midst of sentences to emphasize aspects of a
story. In B, numbers are names or substantives; 2 of something
is different in kind than 5 of something. In B, things change
continually. Identity is a fluid idea. Here, numbers express the
underlying rhythms of an utterance and in so doing integrates it
into the conception held by the inhabitants of C that the world
is as a form of dance. For the people of D, numbers are the
names of t