Italian author Umberto Eco kicked off Rome's annual Maths Festival on Thursday by rubbishing the existence of 'mystic numbers'.
Addressing an audience that included Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, Eco pooh-poohed the idea of numbers having hidden meaning, as thought by followers of kabbalah like Madonna as well as believers in numerology and the paranormal.
''Every time we want to attribute a significance to numbers that goes beyond what they are, it's a perverted use of mathematics,'' said the author of bestselling medieval monk whodunit The Name of the Rose.
Eco added that numbers have been manipulated to create the illusion of great encoded meaning from antiquity right up until the last century.
Taking the example of September 11, the day of the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Centre, Eco said that people had seen ''amazing coincidences'' in the fact that there are also 11 letters in New York City, George W. Bush, and Afghanistan.
''You can do whatever you want with numbers,'' he added.
Some of the world's greatest mathematical minds are tasked with explaining why art, music and literature only exist thanks to numbers at the four-day festival, which runs until Sunday at Rome's Auditorium-Parco della Musica.
Among the famous number crunchers at the event are five Nobel Prize winners including John Nash, the American mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, and Indian economist Amartya Sen, who works on the equations behind famine.
But writers, artists and composers are also in on the act in an effort to woo a traditionally maths-phobic public to the event, this year entitled Mathematics: The Queen of Science and Art.
''Everyone still thinks maths is boring, so the idea of the festival is to present it in a more interesting way without dumbing things down,'' said eminent Italian mathematician and festival director Piergiorgio Odifreddi.
Among the highlights this year are a juggler with a maths degree who will explain how his numbers nous helped him enter the Guiness Book of World Records for keeping 12 objects in the air at the same time; and Alfio Quarteroni, the mathematician behind Swiss yacht syndicate Alinghi, who will reveal the secrets behind the boat that won last year's Americas Cup.
As well as lectures there are concerts, ballets, films and an exhibition of 66 engravings, drawings and watercolours by mathematically-minded Dutch artist M. C. Escher, many on show in Europe for the first time.
Organisers are hoping to repeat the success of the first edition of the maths fest in 2007, which attracted 50,000 visitors.
