Just Figures? Forensic Clairvoyance, Mathematics, and the Language Question

Jetlagged in the déjà-vu routine of hotel arrival and collapse, I found the mesmerism of my soporific reverie suddenly interrupted by one of those forensic journeys of witness on The Learning Channel. There was nothing especially remarkable about what it had to say; in fact it was just another example of the various excuses for scientific sleuthing that fill our screens every night. This particular narrative concerned the chance discovery of a human skull, an “anonym” as it’s technically called—human remains devoid of any form of identification. A dearth of clues maintained the bones’ stubborn and seductive mystery and forced the investigative team to look elsewhere for answers. But it was the counter-intuitive presumption that an entirely different context’s data might betray the skull’s identity that caught my attention on this occasion, for it suddenly seemed curious that things with no apparent connection to the material under scrutiny could unlock the secret of its provenance.