Thinking in Numbers.

This week’s book of the week, BBC R4 9.45am, has this title. Its author has found many strange facts. In China the word for four ducks is different to the one for four pens is different again for…. Each word covers a category, for instance long thin things like rivers, trees and presumably super models. Many primitive tribes only count to two. One word for one, one for two and one for more than two or a word for ‘and one’ so five becomes, “two and one and one and one.” One tribe describes amounts by indicating the height above the ground of a pile of what’s being counted by a hand gesture. One tribe has no concept of numbers at all and one that it is positively bad to count things, particularly people. Almost all have no concept of negative numbers or fractions. A chronology of numerical concepts begins to appear each building on the last. The concept of similar items without which no counting can occur, one, more than one, names for more than one, grouping of numbers to shorthand larger numbers in tens and hundreds: And then the more esoteric concepts of zero, negative numbers, fractions and decimalisation and the measurement of things by units of length, weight and time. We have built these concepts of numbers into our awareness of everything when there are people alive today on this very same planet whose awareness contains none of them. Each concept as it arose was grabbed, utilised and spread as ‘being useful’ yet it’s rarely asked why we considered them so. What underlying imperative made them appear useful? My only conclusion is insecurity. When no fruit means famine, one fruit means food, two means enough and more than two just means more than enough what other than an undefined insecurity would lead us to inventing concepts of more than more than more than enough? What undefined insecurity would lead us to there being less than less than less than none? In reality there is no need for quantification because quantity is evident, a large fruit will feed two, a small one only one. Fast running will catch, slow running won’t. Everything is evident without numbers. Numbers feed hypothesis and hypothesis builds hypothetical constructions that aren’t reality. So what is the undefined insecurity? And again my cat chips in, “Interesting question.”