Groups (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Re: Democracy and ConstitutionalRights)

[John Kozak]

> 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.

I'll take that bet ;-)

The Pirahâ (who I've mentioned already, and who seem to be a useful
counter-example to everything) are one such society.  They did want to
learn numeracy skills, to avoid being ripped-off in barter, and the
linguist/anthropologists living with them spent about a year trying to
do so.  These efforts produced no successes at all. The Pirahã
couldn't accept various logically prior notions like "some questions
must always have the same answers".

John