Heaven's the abode of Threeness, and of Threeness in Oneness. That is to say, of the Trinity
Geometry and culture mirror this threeness, in which they see, with an inner eye unconstrained by our actual experiences of physical Nature, a liberating logic of ascendant presence.
Hence the triangle as such -- from which arise so many constructs of the mind and habit -- but, above all, the three-legged stool of antiquity, which is in our cultural DNA. The three-dimensional, or triangulated, gaze is the conflation of geometry and perception without which there is neither depth nor wholesomeness, and no accuracy in the gauging of height or distance or circumstance.
It seems to me that Nature -- pure, two-legged and four-legged Nature -- finds threeness, in particular three-legged motion, ugly and unwarranted; ungainly in its inherent inefficiency. Contrary to its nature.
Culture, the true contrarian here, finds three-leggedness per se a necessary, periodic detour from Nature's settled purposes that so overwhelm the human gaze from day to day. A detour and even a destination. It, three-leggedness, is not just a stance (and standpoint) but a source of great stability and reassurance (as in the stool, and in second opinions). In marriage, the first child (together with all the children that may follow) is the family's third leg, the sign that the woman and even wife is become a mother -- even of the nation. So is the walking stick a third leg, for the elderly and the infirm. We encounter the three-leg motif in the cooking stones of the village fire and the hearth.
But, as in the love triangle, threeness is also an affirmation of ever-present chaos, and its potentialities.
As for the inherent expectation of motion where ever there are legs, culture offers a simple solution. It gives threeness wheels, in return for an absence of, or quasi-arthritic, limb motion.
