Anti, George, OUG,

It's great to ponder this stuff.

But it's easy to to tie ourselves up in knots with complexity.

I love the "simplicity" behind the story of Einstein coming up with the germ of General Relativity....

"I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: “If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.” I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation."

He described it as the happiest thought of his life.

Clifford Pickover's "A Passion for Mathematics" has a great deal about religion.

From the book: Philo justified the story of Genesis by the fact that 6 is a perfect number and the number of days in the Biblical Creation story. "So important were perfect numbers to the Jews in their search for God that Rabbi Josef ben Jehuda Ankin, in the twelfth century, recommended the study of perfect numbers in his book "Healing of Souls". p. 73

Perfect numbers are numbers equal to the sum of their divisors less than the number. 1+2+3=6. 1+2+4+7+14=28. For every prime there is a corresponding perfect number. 2 to the power p-1 times ((2 to the power p)-1) = the pth perfect number where p is a prime.

Number theory is a pleasure that can be enjoyed by atheists, religionists, poor and rich. Pick over Pickover.

Thanks Poirot, it's always nice to be reminded when one's head is in one's...erm...less salubrious parts.

David, number theory is not something I've ever looked at. I'll do so.

Not so much that, Anti,

I think you've got an excellent mind.

(As opposed to mine which gets boggled on these things quite easily:)

However, the greatest breakthroughs tend to emanate from a simple thought (backed up by considerable knowledge, of course)

Did you know that Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had theories on evolution?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin

So these things came together in Charles'.

Did you know that his voyage on the Beagle came by chance, because someone else was unable to go?

Knowledge, antecedents and opportunity delivered us the Theory of Evolution.

(His other grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood)

Dear Poirot,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%E2%80%93Wedgwood_family contains Darwin's family tree. Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Josiah Wedgwood and Francis Galton along with other notables are all related.

There are certainly examples where inbreeding has produced remarkable individuals in humans. Cleopatra who was not only seductive but most intelligent was the product of generations of brother-sister marriages.