Numerology, Bunker reminds skeptics, is an ancient science, a language practiced by Pythagoras and others. ''Figures are used for measurement, but numbers represent characteristics, qualities, predictable cycles.
''It's reflected in how we talk,'' she says. ''We say we're at sixes and sevens, or we went the whole nine yards, and if you interchange numbers it doesn't sound right, because at subconscious levels we're aware of what these numbers mean.''
BUT
As first used by Chaucer in "The Canterbury Tales" around 1374, "to set on six and seven" meant to risk your entire fortune on the unlikely chance that a single roll of the dice would produce a high score. Only later on did the phrase come to describe a person who would be sufficiently confused or rash to make such a bet, and, still later, to mean disorder or disagreement.
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