On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Jon Johanning wrote:
> Similarly for mathematics -- some societies have been said to have no
> concepts of numbers, or only a few: "one," "two," "many," etc. Perhaps
> they haven't found any use for developing mathematical concepts further
> than that, but I would bet that they would have little trouble learning
> "Western-style" mathematics, at least as well as well as American
> students do (not very well, in most cases!), if they were motivated to
> do so for some reason and were given instruction. It's not that their
> society didn't "construct" mathematics, or their brains are incapable
> of understanding it, whereas Western society did; it's just that they
> were never motivated to get curious about numbers.
I guess I'm not being clear. This is the point I'm trying to emphasize: humans have brains that are capable of math and conceptual hierarchies and formal logical reasoning; however, the widespread expression of specific mode of thought in everyday life is due to social/historical conditions.
Miles