On his book Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures
Cover Interview of June 20, 2017
A close-up
Readers will see that from the outset of the book, I try to
convey the ways in which numbers are filtered into our lives in pervasive and
often undetected ways. Everything from our perception of time to our
self-esteem is impacted by the culturally specific means we use to quantify
things.
Consider the case of time, highlighted in the first chapter:
We have minutes and seconds not because of something that exists in the
physical universe, but because we hold on to the detritus of long-dead
languages in Mesopotamia, namely unusual base-60 number systems that were used
by speakers in that region millennia ago.
In the first chapter I highlight ways in which particular
number systems impact our lives, while presaging some of the major points of
the book. I note that languages vary dramatically in the kinds of numbers they
use, and some languages have few or no numbers. I also point out that number
systems are usually based around decimal, vigesimal, and quinary patterns
because most (but not all) numbers were developed after people recognized
correspondences between the quantities of their fingers and other items in
their surroundings.
However, humans arrived at such recognitions in haphazard
ways that were only concretized and disseminated through and across cultures
via number words. This dissemination ultimately reshaped the human story. These
and other points are hinted at in the first chapter, and explored more fully
later in the book.
[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
A close-up
Readers will see that from the outset of the book, I try to convey the ways in which numbers are filtered into our lives in pervasive and often undetected ways. Everything from our perception of time to our self-esteem is impacted by the culturally specific means we use to quantify things.
Consider the case of time, highlighted in the first chapter: We have minutes and seconds not because of something that exists in the physical universe, but because we hold on to the detritus of long-dead languages in Mesopotamia, namely unusual base-60 number systems that were used by speakers in that region millennia ago.
In the first chapter I highlight ways in which particular number systems impact our lives, while presaging some of the major points of the book. I note that languages vary dramatically in the kinds of numbers they use, and some languages have few or no numbers. I also point out that number systems are usually based around decimal, vigesimal, and quinary patterns because most (but not all) numbers were developed after people recognized correspondences between the quantities of their fingers and other items in their surroundings.
However, humans arrived at such recognitions in haphazard ways that were only concretized and disseminated through and across cultures via number words. This dissemination ultimately reshaped the human story. These and other points are hinted at in the first chapter, and explored more fully later in the book.