The Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
Author(s): Karenleigh A. Overmann (Author), Tom Wynn (Foreword)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: May 25, 2023
Language: English
Print length: 444 pages
ISBN-10: 1009361244
ISBN-13: 9781009361248
Book Description
This is a book about numbers—what they are as concepts and how and why they originate—as viewed through the material devices used to represent and manipulate them. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them. Cognitive archaeologist Karenleigh A. Overmann is the first to explore how material devices contribute to numerical thinking, initially by helping us to visualize and manipulate the perceptual experience of quantity that we share with other species. She explores how and why numbers are conceptualized and then elaborated, as well as the central role that material objects play in both processes. Overmann’s volume thus offers a view of numerical cognition that is based on an alternative set of assumptions about numbers, their material component, and the nature of the human mind and thinking.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“a ‘Copernican Revolution’ in the way we understand the relationship between numbers and the material devices we use to record and manipulate them” ~ César dos Santos, 2023, Qeios. One of five “best science picks” for books in October 2023. ~ Andrew Robinson, 2023, Nature.
Book Description
This book addresses the material devices used to represent and manipulate numerical concepts.
About the Author
Karenleigh A. Overmann has a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Oxford, as well as a master’s in psychology and bachelor’s in anthropology, philosophy, and English from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS). She is a founding member of the faculty of the UCCS Center for Cognitive Archaeology, and in June 2018 she began an MSCA individual fellowship at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her primary research investigates numeracy and literacy as complex cultural systems that emerge through sustained interactions between brains, behaviors, and material forms. Her previous career was in the U.S. Navy, where she performed communications-electronics work as an enlisted Radioman before earning a commission under the Limited Duty Officer program; she retired with 25 years active service in 2003.
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