Human brains come equipped with certain quantitative instincts that are refined with age, but these instincts are very limited. The process seems so normal that we sometimes think of it as a natural part of growing up, but it is not. Number words and written numerals transform our quantitative reasoning as they are coaxed into our cognitive experience by our parents, peers and school teachers. In the absence of the cultural traditions that infuse our lives with numbers from infancy, we would all struggle with even basic quantitative distinctions. None of us, then, is really a “numbers person.” We are not predisposed to handle quantitative distinctions adroitly. This “successor principle” is part of the foundation of our numerical cognition, but requires extensive practice to understand. With time, they start to understand that a given number represents a quantity greater by one than the preceding number. They recognize that numbers are organized sequentially, but have little awareness of what each individual number means.
Initially, kids learn numbers much like they learn letters.
In fact, acquiring the exact meaning of number words is a painstaking process that takes children years. We must be handed the cognitive tools of numbers before we can consistently and easily recognize higher quantities. Prior to being spoon-fed number words, children can only approximately discriminate quantities beyond three. This conclusion is echoed by work with anumeric children in industrialized societies. After all, without counting, how can someone tell whether there are, say, seven or eight coconuts in a tree? Such seemingly straightforward distinctions become blurry through numberless eyes. Yet numberless people struggle with tasks that require precise discrimination between quantities. Like other outsiders, I was continually impressed by their superior understanding of the riverine ecology we shared. As the child of missionaries, I spent some of my youth living with anumeric indigenous people, the aforementioned Pirahã who live along the sinuous banks of the black Maici River. It is worth stressing that these anumeric people are cognitively normal, well-adapted to the environs they have dominated for centuries. While only a small portion of the world’s languages are anumeric or nearly anumeric, they demonstrate that number words are not a human universal. This and many other experiments have converged upon a simple conclusion: When people do not have number words, they struggle to make quantitative distinctions that probably seem natural to someone like you or me. Responses suggest that anumeric people have some trouble keeping track of how many nuts remain in the can, even if there are only four or five in total. The person watching is asked to signal when all the nuts have been removed. In an experiment, a researcher will place nuts into a can one at a time, then remove them one by one. Without numbers, healthy human adults struggle to precisely differentiate and recall quantities as low as four. Researchers have also studied some adults in Nicaragua who were never taught number words.
In a 2017 book, I explored the ways in which humans invented numbers, and how numbers subsequently played a critical role in other milestones, from the advent of agriculture to the genesis of writing.Ĭultures without numbers, or with only one or two precise numbers, include the Munduruku and Pirahã in Amazonia. Speakers of anumeric, or numberless, languages offer a window into how the invention of numbers reshaped the human experience. What’s more, the 7,000 or so languages that exist today vary dramatically in how they utilize numbers. For the bulk of our species’ approximately 200,000-year lifespan, we had no means of precisely representing quantities. The exact (and exacting) numbers we think with impact everything from our schedules to our self-esteem.īut, in a historical sense, numerically fixated people like us are the unusual ones. As you read this, you are likely aware of what time it is, how old you are, your checking account balance, your weight and so on. In contrast, our own lives are governed by numbers. Instead of using words for precise quantities, these people rely exclusively on terms analogous to “a few” or “some.” There are numberless hunter-gatherers embedded deep in Amazonia, living along branches of the world’s largest river tree.