On his book Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures
Cover Interview of June 20, 2017
The wide angle
Like other more commonly acknowledged inventions from stone
axes to the wheel, number words radically shifted the human story. So the book
relates to other work in anthropology that seeks to better elucidate the
history of our species. It also relates to work in linguistics on the types of
number systems used in the world’s languages. Finally, it is integrated with
other recent work in the cognitive sciences that illuminates the distinction
between numbers and the coarse innate quantity recognition skills shared by all
humans.
People sometimes assume that number words just serve as labels
to “numbers” in the brain, but this position is actually not well supported
empirically. The book suggests that numbers are best considered
language-contingent representations of precise quantities, and that most people
do not learn to represent quantities precisely until they have acquired
numbers. (This latter point is similar to the conclusion espoused by cognitive
scientist Rafael Nunez in the most recent issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, suggesting that other
researchers are thinking along similar lines.)
My professional path is ultimately interwoven with my
personal one. Some of my childhood was spent in Amazonia with a group of people
that do not use numbers. (My father, Daniel Everett, was the first to point out
that the language of those people was anumeric.) My personal background
certainly helped to motivate my fascination with the development and usage of
numbers. All of my research focuses on the interaction of language, cognition,
and environment, and the story of numbers is integral to understanding
quantitative cognition and the ways in which humans reshaped their environments
via numerical technologies.
[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012
The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010
The wide angle
Like other more commonly acknowledged inventions from stone axes to the wheel, number words radically shifted the human story. So the book relates to other work in anthropology that seeks to better elucidate the history of our species. It also relates to work in linguistics on the types of number systems used in the world’s languages. Finally, it is integrated with other recent work in the cognitive sciences that illuminates the distinction between numbers and the coarse innate quantity recognition skills shared by all humans.
People sometimes assume that number words just serve as labels to “numbers” in the brain, but this position is actually not well supported empirically. The book suggests that numbers are best considered language-contingent representations of precise quantities, and that most people do not learn to represent quantities precisely until they have acquired numbers. (This latter point is similar to the conclusion espoused by cognitive scientist Rafael Nunez in the most recent issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, suggesting that other researchers are thinking along similar lines.)
My professional path is ultimately interwoven with my personal one. Some of my childhood was spent in Amazonia with a group of people that do not use numbers. (My father, Daniel Everett, was the first to point out that the language of those people was anumeric.) My personal background certainly helped to motivate my fascination with the development and usage of numbers. All of my research focuses on the interaction of language, cognition, and environment, and the story of numbers is integral to understanding quantitative cognition and the ways in which humans reshaped their environments via numerical technologies.