Significance of the number 10

[startreklord06]

I just finished rereading the books and I noticed the number 10 shows up a lot. There's:

10 books in the series

10 heartbeats

10 surges

10 KR orders

10 oath gates 

10 lamps in the Oathgate

A 10 pointed star in the Oathgate

10 shard blade stances

 

[CalaCrisp88]

A lot of the Shards have numbers that are kinda significant to them. Preservation's is 16, Endowment's is 5, etc

[CosmereQuestioner]

Brandon has said that each shard has a number  (when asked more about it at various events he stated we shouldn't pay so much attention to their "number" as its not that big of a deal or significant).

[galendo]

I'm hoping for: 10 oaths.  The last five books are going to be pretty boring if we've already seen all the cool power-ups there are to see.

[Yata he/him]

9 hours ago, galendo said:

I'm hoping for: 10 oaths.  The last five books are going to be pretty boring if we've already seen all the cool power-ups there are to see.

Actually I will be really disappointed if there are more than 5 Oaths....The references of the past are pretty clear about and we already saw complete Radiant from Dalinar's Visions.

I don't want to see this kind of twist and much more, I don't think more Oaths would mean more powers....the Radiants have (with little control) all their powers from their firsts Oaths. They just become skilled and efficient in their use

Anyway returning to the "numbers" to me seems that it's more "a shardworld number" than "a shard number"...for example on Scadrial all the Metallic Arts are builded around the 16 not only the Preservatio- fueled

Edited November 7, 2016 by Yata

[Eki]

11 hours ago, galendo said:

I'm hoping for: 10 oaths.  The last five books are going to be pretty boring if we've already seen all the cool power-ups there are to see.

I don't think we'll see the oaths of all orders in the first five. Not directly, anyway. Not to mention that there are other powers out there: fabrials, Listener forms, the Old Magic... There's lots to discover even without the oaths.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

On 11/7/2016 at 9:22 AM, Eki said:

On 11/6/2016 at 9:38 PM, galendo said:

I'm hoping for: 10 oaths.  The last five books are going to be pretty boring if we've already seen all the cool power-ups there are to see.

I don't think we'll see the oaths of all orders in the first five. Not directly, anyway. Not to mention that there are other powers out there: fabrials, Listener forms, the Old Magic... There's lots to discover even without the oaths.

As Eki said, there are a fair number of other powers to learn about.
As a side point to your statement Galendo, even if we see all 5 Oaths from Kal & Shallan in the front 5, there are still fancy things with the other Orders and their powers, so don't worry about running out of "power-ups" early on. (This doesn't even count one of my power combo theories that I need to refine before posting)

[+hwiles]

If I had to guess, the repeated number thing that occurs on shardworlds is essentially just a way for the Shard holder to pat themselves on the back for building/ruling over a world and to help inspire religions.  Shard holders have Godlike powers, it only makes sense that they would want to be thought of and worshiped in like fashion.  Either that, or it's to troll in-world scientists who aren't cosmere-aware.  

[galendo]

Well, I just happen to think that it'll be a bit boring if there's only five oaths.  I guess a lot of people feel differently, but given the importance of the number ten, having only five seems like doing it halfway.  Pretty much every other part of the magic system has to do with ten (ten Orders, ten Surges, ten Heralds), so having the Oath stuck at five seems wrong to me.

Plus, think how awesome a revelation scene you could have, probably around the end of book six, when both the characters and the readers find out they've been wrong the whole time.

I'm just saying, I'm going to be pretty disappointed both from a sense of asymmetry and a sense of lost potential if there end up being only five.

[Zea mays]

I think 5 oaths make sense, because of the origin of the Knights radiant: the book-whithin-a-book Way of Kings. Nohadon's  composed 40 parables, that's 4 per order. If you give each order one oath per story, plus the first oath (Life before death etc.) for everyone, that's five oaths per order (or five truths if you bond a lie spren).

[Eki]

Five also exists in other places, like the length of a week. Of course, that might just be so they can have ten weeks a month and ten months a year, but still.

[galendo]

6 hours ago, Zea mays said:

I think 5 oaths make sense, because of the origin of the Knights radiant: the book-whithin-a-book Way of Kings. Nohadon's  composed 40 parables, that's 4 per order. If you give each order one oath per story, plus the first oath (Life before death etc.) for everyone, that's five oaths per order (or five truths if you bond a lie spren).

That's an interesting observation -- I never picked up on the number of parables, or that there'd be precisely four per Order if divided evenly.  Still, that presupposes that they divide evenly.  We know from the book-within-a-book Words of Radiance that the truths of the Lightweavers, at least, didn't follow a fixed pattern, so it would be difficult to come up with parables that directly addressed them.  Are they the only Order lacking formal Oaths?  Maybe, maybe not.

6 hours ago, Eki said:

Five also exists in other places, like the length of a week. Of course, that might just be so they can have ten weeks a month and ten months a year, but still.

Yeah, but the days of the week aren't directly tied into the magic system.  Everything that Honor set up involved the number ten -- ten Heralds, ten Surges, ten Honorblades, ten gemstones.  Even things that he (presumably) didn't set up directly, but that still involved the magic system adopted the number ten (ten kinds of Radiant spren, for instance, or ten heartbeats to summon a dead Shardblade).  So even though the Oaths were maybe technically introduced by Ishi (and maybe not, too -- we don't really know for sure), because they tie directly into the magic system I'd expect there to be ten of them as well.

[Eki]

14 hours ago, galendo said:

Yeah, but the days of the week aren't directly tied into the magic system.  Everything that Honor set up involved the number ten -- ten Heralds, ten Surges, ten Honorblades, ten gemstones.  Even things that he (presumably) didn't set up directly, but that still involved the magic system adopted the number ten (ten kinds of Radiant spren, for instance, or ten heartbeats to summon a dead Shardblade).  So even though the Oaths were maybe technically introduced by Ishi (and maybe not, too -- we don't really know for sure), because they tie directly into the magic system I'd expect there to be ten of them as well.

Magic systems are generally a result of the interaction between a planet and the Invested powers there, so Honor probably didn't set up the system with ten surges. It may just have been a natural result of him and Cultivation Investing there. Some of the other things he did set up though, but maybe only because of how many surges there are in the first place.

And since Roshar seems to have been created by Adonalsium, the five hundred day year could very much be a part of the planet's "identity", so to speak. It certainly does feel artificial, anyway.