Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/415

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PROBLEMS EMPHASIZED BY PRAGMATISM
411

uses two digits, the digit on the right will stand for units, the digit on the left for twos. The symbol 10 would now stand for two, the symbol 11 would stand for three, and so on. With the triadic system the places would be used exactly as in our decadic system. In the first place would be the units, in the next place to the left the threes, the third place to the left the nines, the fourth place the twenty-sevens, and so on. Now all numbers could be written in any of these systems. In starting with a new system, one could begin to perform additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions, as with the decadic system. The possibility of an endless range of experiments, with mature persons, who, while retaining all their present arithmetical knowledge, would be instantly reduced to the position of young children, so far as some of the computations were concerned, all this makes an inquiry into the psychology of simple deductions of this type a very attractive one. Whoever wants to study psychology by becoming a little child has here a place for a wide range of study.