Tribes Without Names For Numbers Cannot Count

Nature ^ | 8-19-2004 | Helen Pearson

[blam]

Published online: 19 August 2004

Tribe without names for numbers cannot count

Helen Pearson

Amazon study fuels debate on whether the concept of numbers is innate.

Can a knowledge of numbers determine the way we think?

© Alamy

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

Psychologists, anthropologists and linguists have long wondered whether animals, young children or certain cultures can conceptualize numbers without the language to describe them.

To tackle the issue, behavioural researcher Peter Gordon of Columbia University in New York journeyed into the Amazon. He carried out studies with the Pirahã tribe, a hunter-gatherer group of about 200 people, whose counting system consists of words which mean, approximately, 'one', 'two' and 'many'.

Gordon designed a series of tasks to examine whether tribe members could precisely count and conceive of numbers beyond one or two, even if they lacked the words. For example, he asked them to look at a group of batteries and line up a matching amount.

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.

Opposing views

Other researchers in the field have welcomed the study. But they disagree about what it means. Psychologist Charles Gallistel, at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, says that the Pirahã simply may not recognize when one quantity of items exactly equals another, so they have trouble with matching tasks. He argues that people do possess an innate, non-verbal ability to conceive of all numbers, and that language simply helps them to refine it.

Psychologist Susan Carey of Harvard University in Massachusetts argues the opposite: she says we lack an innate ability to count beyond very small numbers, and that the Pirahã difficulty with numbers proves it. "It's a spectacular finding," she says.

Carey and other researchers believe that children and some animals are born with two basic types of 'counting' but that these are limited. First, they can recognize one, two or three objects by recording an image in their memory. Second, they can make estimates of larger numbers, such as 'about twenty'. Carey believes that the Pirahã rely on these innate systems.

Whorf hypothesis

On a broader level, the study also addresses a long standing and controversial hypothesis developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the late 1930s: that language can determine the way we think or what we are able to think.

But Gordon's study is one of the best examples in which language allows people to think something completely new, says cognitive psychologist Lisa Feigenson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. "This is by far the strongest piece of evidence," she says. In this case, a lack of language seems to prevent the Pirahã from thinking about larger numbers, she says.

However, the latest study will not resolve the debate about whether language can shape thought in other examples, points out Feigenson. "I think the jury is still out," she says.

[djf]

And as an interesting aside, years ago I read a book by a fellow who had gone down and spent a few years with the Yanamamo tribe. He became very accepted by them, learned the language, and eventually married a native Yanamamo woman.

IIRC, he brought her back to the US, and she was totally disfunctional. Couldn't understand even simple concepts like WALK/DON'T WALK at street corners. So impaired, that she eventually had to return to the Amazon jungle.

[William Terrell]

Maybe they picked the stupidest tribe members to do the "series of tasks".

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

I once read a story about a tribe somewhere in the world which based its numbering system on the dogs the people kept. They counted things by the number of legs on the dogs, using a base 4 system. I forget what the individual legs were called. Our number four was "doggy-one", eight was "doggy-two", twelve was "doggy-three", and sixteen was "one houndred".

[as 'Civ waits for the laughter, all he hears from the darkened auditorium are crickets]

Many thanks to Roger Wagner, an old-timer Apple II programmer extraordinaire, whose joke I just mangled. ;'D

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

There is, of course a name (and a website) for this. :') I have had this book for years (bought it as a remainder) but have never read it.

---

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos

---

[RightWhale]

Crows can count to six. My neighbors lost count at four. Remember Georg Gamov's book One, Two, Three, Infinity?

[blam]

"Remember Georg Gamov's book One, Two, Three, Infinity?"

Nope, sure don't.

[JohnBovenmyer]

This tribe also has the simplest language known.

[ApplegateRanch]

That is more than just a story. The neighboting tribe counted the tail as a leg, and used base-5.

They were continually quarelling, over territory, food, and women. This lead to an arms race, with disastrous consequences if it didn't end. Finally, during a truce, they agreed to a Strategic Spear Reduction Treaty.

The problem, was neither understood the other's numerical system, which led, first to acussation of cheating; then, to full scale warfare.

Sadly, both sides were were wiped out by mutually assured destruction.

Where they lived is now just a desert, with wind whistling through caves, playing an aeolian dirge for them.

[garbanzo]

Noam Chomsky, call your office...

[fella]

The demonrats are working to amend the motor/voter law so that these people can vote for their tax plans.

[PLMerite]

The Whorf hyphothesis:

"Perhaps today *is* a good day to die!"

Whoops, wrong Whorf...

[A.J.Armitage]

If I'm not mistaken, the Greeks also conceived of the past as before them and the future behind them, because you can see in front of you and can remember the past, but can't see behind you and can't predict the future. I can't imagine how such a reversal would change your ideas about ancestors, death, etc. We're clearly not walking toward the past. We're "walking backward", only seeing where we were, not where we're going.

[SunkenCiv]

At the peace conference they ordered pizza, and couldn't decide how many pieces... uh, never mind. ;')

[Doctor Stochastic]

Remember Georg Gamov's book One, Two, Three, Infinity?

It takes a while to finish that last chapter though.

[AdmSmith]

Maybe we have something else here as well. In this description of the research http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-08/tccu-soo081804.php it is stated
"Their skill levels were similar to those in pre-linguistic infants, monkeys, birds and rodents, and appeared to correlate to recent brain imaging studies indicating a different sort of numerical competence that seems to be immune to numerical language deprivation. Interestingly, Gordon noted, while Pirahã adults had difficulty learning larger numbers, Piraha children did not."

Benjamin Lee Whorf's theory is that language can determine the nature and content of thought. According to this there are concepts in one culture that people of another culture simply cannot understand because their language has no words for it.

Maybe this is the reason for the slow development of modernity and democracy in the Arab world?

[AdmSmith]

Here is more about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4110/whorf.html

[GeekDejure]

Maybe they picked the stupidest tribe members to do the "series of tasks".

Hey... ease up on these guys. Obviously they know that 1 = Pee, and 2 = Poop ... thus everything else is totally insignificant !!! ;-))

.

[nuconvert]

And people blind from birth don't really know what 'green' is.

[nuconvert]

LOL.
Maybe they never have more than 3 people at dinner.

[nuconvert]

Or maybe they always have lots of leftovers