Tribes Without Names For Numbers Cannot Count

Nature ^ | 8-19-2004 | Helen Pearson

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

The tribe members struggled to perform these tasks accurately after the numbers were greater than three, Gordon reports in Science1; and their performance got worse the higher the numbers climbed. "They couldn't keep track at all," he says.

Florida. Democrats. 'Nuff Said. :)

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[lepton]

fascinating.

[GreenHornet]

The tribe members struggled to perform these tasks accurately after the numbers were greater than three, Gordon reports in Science1; and their performance got worse the higher the numbers climbed. "They couldn't keep track at all," he says.

However, many of them were still able to obtain employment with the General Accounting Office.

[SAJ]

And, by some curious coincidence, an enormous proportion of these tribes, upon emigrating to the United States, settle in or near Washingtion, D.C. and go to work for either GAO or CBO.

[Loyalist]

Did Arthur Anderson outsource any of its Enron work to Brazil?

[SAJ]

GMTA...too quick for me (g!)

[jnarcus]

Who cares? These tribesmen are not being called upon to do m odern mathematics...nothing inb their daily lives requires much of anything that would look like modern education....Wjat I want to know is HOW MUCH of my money went for this ridiculous research? Eskimos have many more names for snow than most English speakers, Navaho and other southwest Indians have many more terms for rain than most English speakers....All that says is one language has different uses and nuances....This is a ho hum of the highest order...academia gone wild

[GreenHornet]

Then again, maybe we're onto something here!

[happygrl]

the Pirahã simply may not recognize when one quantity of items exactly equals another

What, they can't see ?

I am convinced that intelligence is malleable, that if I.Q. tests were given these people would be low I.Q.

But if their children were raised in high culture homes in developed countries, their I.Q.s would rise.

Brain stimulation.

[Thinkin' Gal]

A study of an Amazonian tribe is stoking fierce debate about whether people can count without numbers.

Send in the bureaucrats. That'll teach 'em.

[elli1]

Seems like a silly debate to me. Surely these people have a ''concept'' of how many little heads will appear at the dinner table and, thus, how many rabbits & carrots need to go in the stew pot to feed them.

[ShandaLear]

The same thing is true regarding color. There are tribal people who use the same word for blue and green and cannot differntiate between the two colors as a result.

Word describe concept and ideas. Without the ability to put a name to an object, the object cannot be conceptualized.

[avg_freeper]

I remember reading in the book "Philosophy in the Flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson about a tribe that reversed the metaphor of the past being behind you and the future in front of you.

Because of this reversal these people had a completely different concept of ideas like ancestors, prediction, death, birth, and many other things.

[buccaneer81]

Butthead: "I hate numbers."

Beavis: "Heh, heh, yeah, there's like to many of 'em!"

[aculeus]

A study of an Amazonian tribe is stoking fierce debate about whether people can count without numbers.

When are the researchers going to address really challenging problems?

Such as, do lepers who have lost one or more digits to their disease switch to something other than a base-10 numeric system?

[djf]

I wonder if there is not some type of cultural effect here, though. Certainly, if two guys went out hunting, and one came back with three squirrels(or whatever), and the other came back with, say, seven, wouldn't they innately realize how one did much better than the other?

Interesting study, no matter what the outcome.

[bert]

I have interacted with a number of illiterate people who could not do arithmetic or write any numbers.

They could however all count money.