Description
This is a book about numbers – what they are as concepts and how and why they originate – as viewed through the material devices used to represent and manipulate them. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them. Overmann is the first to explore how material devices contribute to numerical thinking, initially by helping us to visualize and manipulate the perceptual experience of quantity that we share with other species. She explores how and why numbers are conceptualized and then elaborated, as well as the central role that material objects play in both processes. Overmann's volume thus offers a view of numerical cognition that is based on an alternative set of assumptions about numbers, their material component, and the nature of the human mind and thinking.
Table of Contents
1. Numbers in a nutshell; 2. Converging perspectives on numbers; 3. The brain in numbers; 4. Bodies and behaviors; 5. Language in numbers; 6. Global and regional patterns; 7. Materiality in numbers; 8. Materiality in cognition; 9. Making quantity tangible and manipulable; 10. Tallies and other devices that accumulate; 11. Interpreting prehistoric artifacts; 12. Devices that accumulate and group; 13. Handwritten notations; 14. The materiality of numbers.
