Counting to Ten in the Age of Partial Enlightenment, part I

The metric system is a wonderful tribute to the Age of Enlightenment idea of all things of, by and for man, in the words of the French philosopher Condorcet, to be "for all people for all time".   Unfortunately it didn't go quite far enough, and now we're stuck with their oversight for the foreseeable future -- and beyond.

The problem is that the standard number system is based on ten.  Why? Because most of us have ten fingers and ten toes.  After all, what could be more important in arithmetic than counting on your fingers?

But first, let's ask why the has U.S.A. resisted metrification?  True, the U.S. is conservative and slow to change, highly resistant to many good ideas that originate in government, and due to its bizarre organization, states have power over policies that would elsewhere be centralized.  But that's not the reason.  Evidently, the reasons have to do with proportion and with convenience of the number system.  A yard does correspond to a meter, but that's about it.  A foot corresponds to a human foot, which is approximately 30.5 cm, an odd duck of a number.  In contrast, a foot has twelve inches, a number nicely divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 (but not by 5).  And a yard is three feet long, because three feet fit therein.  Why do you think a day has 2X12 hours (instead of 10 or 20) and an hour and minute are each divided into units of 60 (instead of 100)?  They didn't get metrified, at least not until you start measuring in milliseconds.

There is also evidence that many things manufactured and designed in metric units, just don't look right: their proportions are slightly off.

We understand that these ideas may be a little strange to the reader, but a bit of research and thought might be convincing.  We are convinced, so let's get to the point.

The point is that the Enlightenment should have changed the base of the number system from ten to twelve.  This would throw off finger-counters, but it makes arithmetic otherwise easier for people.

We realize that this notion is a bit difficult to grasp.  For example, two new digits would be needed to take the please of the two-digit numbers 10 and 11.  Just for fun, let's use a phi (ϕ) to represent 10 in this system.  For 11, we can use a 'U' character.  So to count, it would go: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,ϕ,U,10,11,12...,19,1ϕ,1U,20,21...  and so forth.  It works exactly the same as before but with more digits.

There are some other changes, but while initially odd, they work out better.  Let's consider division by 2 (in base 12 arithmetic). For example, ϕ/2=5, U/2=5.5 and 10/2=6. It's just like dividing inches in a foot.  It works much better than if a foot were divided into ten inches!

So a meter would be divided into 12 units, four of which would correspond to a foot.  Each of those 12 units would be divided into 12 more, and so forth, just like the metric system, only in a different number system. It would be unimaginably better.  The problem is the "unimaginable" part, so it's just not going to happen. Too bad those smart folks missed their big chance...