The Law of Three

3

A few blogs ago in the Unifying Perspective of the Middle Way I wrote on what I felt was a universal principle of what has been called the Law of Three. With some of the comments I received I thought it might be fun to add just a few more things concerning three.

 We see three everywhere but we probably don't take the time to notice it, yet we use threes to conceptualize everything. The alphabet is referred to as the ABC's and there is of course Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Our basic sentence structure to communicate is subject, verb, object. While grammarians distinguish simple, compound, and complex sentences with punctuation rules of three major medial marks: comma, semicolon, and colon, whose orthographic symbolism itself reflects trichotomic structuring a, ab, and b. There are also three principal terminal marks: period, question mark, and exclamation point. The latter marks are allegedly indicators of the three major sentence types: declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory.”

There are also three basic types of reasoning.

Induction (Declare answer first, then proceed to prove; eg. math theories)
Deduction (Proceed to prove then find answer; eg. Sherlock Holmes, Clue)
Analogy (By comparision)

 But as Bronislaw, Malinowski wrote in A Scientific Theory of Culture.

"Nothing is as difficult to see as the obvious."

We use Colloquialisms such as three cheers for someone, such as "Hip, Hip, Hooray" or the starter of a race will say "One, two, three, go." There are the three commands "On your mark, get set, go. There is beg, borrow or steal and in movies there is "Lights, Camera, Action.” On a sinking ship the order is Women and children first, men last. And of course in real estate there is the mantra of Location location, location which could be here, there and everywhere because we have things to do, places to go and people to see in  any way, shape or form. I mean there are no ifs, ands, or buts yet if we stay calm, cool, and collected and Stop, look and listen we won’t fall Hook line and sinker because we’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt so lets just eat, drink and be merry...Jesus Marry and Joseph!

Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil

Closer to home on earth, the third rock from the sun we have states of matter divided into solid, liquid, and gas with the tripartition of the earth distinguished as land (solid), sea (liquid), and air (gas). These in turn are subdivided into air or atmosphere which may be broken down into troposphere, stratosphere, and ionosphere, while the earth may be divided into three types of climate zones: frigid, temperate, and torrid. There are three basic planes: Above- Surfaced- Beneath with three basic Earth divisions: Core- Mantle- Crust. We further divide the three kingdoms of matter - animal, vegetable or mineral and white light composed of the mixture of the three primary hues: red, green, and blue. On this earth food providing energy is in 3 forms (protein, carbohydrates, fat), with the water made up of 3 parts (two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen) and the air primarily consisting of 3 parts (78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, .93% argon.)

Third Rock from the Sun

There are the spacial geographical divisions such as North, Central (or Middle), and South America or the East, the Central, and the West.  And just as the world is divided, so is man. The human ear is divided into the outer, middle, and inner ear, the brain into cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla, the small intestine into the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum. The human voice range continuum of the soprano, mezzo-soprano, and alto (female), and tenor, baritone, and bass (male). For more anatomical tripartite relations see List of Three's in Anatomy.

 
We see the tripartition in time periods or Ages divided into three such as the Stone Age which is commonly divided into Old, Middle, and New, i.e., Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic.

 
Pythagoras said that when the triangle is once established any problem is already two thirds solved as the foundation of all existence is triangular, of which there are 3 types- acute, obtuse and right.

 

Pythagoras Diagram

It's interesting to note that in the number three we have the first geometric figure as two straight lines cannot enclose any space. Thus three lines are necessary to form three dimensions that are required to form a solid. A triangle is the simplest planar figure and a cube is the simplest three-dimensional solid. So as two could represent a square, three could represent a cube or solid contents. So it would seem that there is a universal law at work where three represents that which is solid, real, substantial, complete and entire. As such we see this law stamped on all things that are considered complete and manifest as real because as some might say, God’s attributes are three - omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. In the bible there are  66 (3 x 22) Books[39 (3 x 13) in the Old Testament- 27 (3 x 9) in the New Testament]  31,173 (3 x 10,391) Verses in the Bible [23,214 (3 x 7738) in the O.T.- 7959 (3 x 2653) in the N.T. There were 333 prophecies concerning the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus Christ was crucified at the age of 33, after a ministry that lasted 3 years. He spent nine (3 x 3) hours on the cross, with 3 of those hours in darkness. He was buried for 3 days and 3 nights, and resurrected on the 3rd day.

 Ephesians 3

Newton Laws of Motion were first published in his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) concerning the motion of physical objects wrote in the third volume (of the text), the Three Laws of Motion as:

Sir Isaac Newton

1.  First Law: Law of Inertia - Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.

 "An object at rest or traveling in uniform motion will remain at rest or traveling in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net force."

2. Second Law: Law of Motion -  Lex II: Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimtur.

"The rate of change of momentum of a body is equal to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction."

  3. Third Law: law of reciprocal actions -  Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et aequalem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones is se mutuo semper esse aequales et in partes contrarias dirigi. 

"All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction."

  Sir Isaac Newton

According to Ayurvedic ("the knowledge of life", or "the science of life") philosophy, health is dependent upon one's ability to live in harmony with one's self and with the external universe and recognize three major body (or physiology) types which they refer to as the three DOSHAS: VATA, PITTA, and KAPHA.

 Ayurvedic

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831) Idealist philosopher, born in Stuttgart, Germany published his Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), in which he set out his tripartite system of logic, philosophy of nature, and mind and his famous dialectic, positing something (thesis), denying it (antithesis), and combining the two half-truths in a synthesis which contains a greater portion of truth in its complexity.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 CE) - The Three topoi     

 Central to Epictetus' philosophy is his account of three topoi, or areas of study. He suggests that the apprentice philosopher should be trained in three distinct areas or topoi (see Epictetus Discourses 3.2.1-2):

1. Desires (orexeis) and aversions (ekkliseis);
2. Impulse to act (hormas) and not to act (aphormas);
3. Freedom from deception, hasty judgement, and anything else related to assents (sunkatatheseis).

 These three areas of training correspond to the three types of philosophical discourse referred to by earlier Stoics; the physical, the ethical, and the logical (see Diogenes Laertius 7.39).

And of course there is Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914),
U.S. philosopher, logician who said,

Gurdjieff claimed that there were only three ordinary ways for real spiritual development from the three eastern teachings that emphasize the development of the body, mind, or the emotions.

 
The first three ways are:

 The way of the fakir-  The fakir struggles with the physical body and self-mastery through difficult physical exercises and postures.

 The way of the monk -  The way of the monk (or nun) represents the way of faith, the cultivation of emotional feelings.

 The way of the yogi -  The yogi's approach is through knowledge and the mind.

G.I. Gurdjieff

 Gurdjieff purposed a fourth way which I might write on in a later blog. But all this was in fun so you could see that you could literally spend hours upon hours with what I see as a law of Three. But as in everything there are 3 versions to every story- my version, your version and the truth and then you can answer for yourself,

yes,
no
maybe

Because all we want is

The Truth
The whole Truth
and
Nothing but the Truth.

:-)