ARTelevision

I have always held that our thoughts are completely dependent upon our language. That notion has fallen out of fashion of late, due mainly to the rise in fashion of the works of Chomsky and Pinker – neither of whose work I find particularly cogent.

Be that as it may, this account is fascinating for what it reveals about the human – perhaps the aberrant human – mind. If there is sufficient interest in continuing the root discussion or simply in ruminating about the implications of this study, I’ll dig up a few references of past threads in which the relationship between “the map and the territory” is discussed.
…………

Life without numbers in a unique Amazon tribe

Piraha apparently can't learn to count and have no distinct words for colours

By STEPHEN STRAUSS

UPDATED AT 1:46 PM EDT Friday, Aug 20, 2004

1+1=2. Mathematics doesn't get any more basic than this, but even 1+1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon.

A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting.

Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time.

Their lack of enumeration skills is just one of the mental and cultural traits that has led scientists who have visited the 300 members of the tribe to describe the Piraha as "something from Mars."

Daniel Everett, an American linguistic anthropologist, has been studying and living with Piraha for 27 years.

Besides living a numberless life, he reports in a separate study prepared for publication, the Piraha are the only people known to have no distinct words for colours.

They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations. They don't sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day.

Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children, Prof. Everett reports.

They communicate almost as much by singing, whistling and humming as by normal speech.

They frequently change their names, because they believe spirits regularly take them over and intrinsically change who they are.

They do not believe that outsiders understand their language even after they have just carried on conversations with them.

They have no creation myths, tell no fictional stories and have no art. All of their pronouns appear to be borrowed from a neighbouring language.

Their lack of numbering terms and skills is highlighted in a report by Columbia University cognitive psychologist Peter Gordon that appears today in Science.

Intrigued by anecdotal reports that Prof. Everett and his wife Keren had presented about the mathlessness of Piraha life, Prof. Gordon conducted a number of experiments over a three-year period.

He found that a group of male tribe members -- women and children were not involved because of certain cultural taboos -- could not perform the most elementary mathematical operations.

When faced with a line of batteries and asked to duplicate the number they saw, the men could not get beyond two or three before starting to make mistakes.

They had difficulty drawing straight lines to copy a number of lines they were presented with. They couldn't remember which of two boxes had more or less fish symbols on it, even when they were about to be rewarded for their knowledge.

A significant part of the difficulty related to their number-impoverished vocabulary.

Although they would say one word to indicate a single thing and another for two things, those words didn't necessarily mean one or two in any usual sense. "It is more like oneish and twoish," Prof. Gordon said in an interview.

Prof. Everett, who now teaches at the University of Manchester in England and who unlike Prof. Gordon is a fluent Piraha-speaker, takes issue even with the "ishness" of the Piraha numbers.

"The word he [Gordon] translates as 'one' means just a relatively small amount, the word for 'two' means a relatively bigger amount," he said in an interview from Brazil.

Prof. Everett points out that when the Piraha are talking and use the "oneish" word to talk about something such as fish, you can't tell whether they are describing a single fish, a small fish, or one or two fish.

Linguists and anthropologists who have seen both the Everett and Gordon studies are flabbergasted by the tribe's strangeness, particularly since the Piraha have not lived in total isolation.

The tribe, which lives on a tributary river to the Amazon, has been in contact with other Brazilians for 200 years and regularly sells nuts to, and shares their women with, Brazilian traders who stop by.

"Why they have been resistant to adopting Western number systems is beyond me," Ray Jackendoff of Brandeis University, a past president of the Linguistic Society of America, said in an interview.

Prof. Gordon said the findings are perhaps the strongest evidence for a once largely discredited linguistic theory.

More than 60 years ago, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf argued that learning a specific language determined the nature and content of how you think.

That theory fell into intellectual disrepute after linguist Noam Chomsky's notions of a universal human grammar and Harvard University professor Steven Pinker's idea of a universal language instinct became widely accepted.

"The question is, is there any case where not having words for something doesn't allow you to think about it?" Prof. Gordon asked about the Piraha and the Whorfian thesis. "I think this is a case for just that."

Prof. Everett argues that what the Piraha case demonstrates is a fundamental cultural principle working itself out in language and behaviour.

The principle is that the Piraha see themselves as intrinsically different from, and better than, the people around them; everything they do is to prevent them from being like anyone else or being absorbed into the wider world. One of the ways they do this is by not abstracting anything: numbers, colours, or future events.

"This is the reason why the Piraha have survived as Piraha while tribes around them have been absorbed into Brazilian culture," Prof. Everett said.

Nevertheless, the Piraha's lives and lifestyles are so strange that other anthropologists have raised the question of whether inbreeding -- their lack of number skills apparently makes it difficult for the Piraha to identify kin -- has resulted in a tribe of intellectually handicapped people.

Both Prof. Everett and Prof. Gordon say that they have seen no examples of this and that the Pirahas' fishing, hunting and even joking skills seem equal to those of people elsewhere.

..........................

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...S20/TPScience/

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brianna

hahah the're just reporting on this on npr as i read.

tecoyah

This shows an interesting result of Culture Clash. We as the "Advanced " civilization, assume a deficiency in the "Backwards" culture, because it does not conform to our own understanding of thought. Personally, I would use the term different, rather than placing a bias upon something I have yet to understand.
One wonders if indeed the lack of certain thought patterns is due to a lack of need, lackof understanding, of simply a different frame of reference for that which is assumed missing.

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Phage

tecoyah,

You are trying to be extremely politically correct, but it is unwarranted in this situation. It is clear that there is a deficiency in their culture: "Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children, Prof. Everett reports."

"They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations." This combined with their lack of numbering makes it extremely unlikely that they would even be able to use advanced technology, much less make it themselves. It is certainly interesting how their culture developed, and it would be unreasonable to assign "fault" for how they are now, but don't let your efforts to be understanding undermine your own intelligence.

Mantus

Intresting. Perhaps it's a genetic condition. If it was cultural I think they would have picked up the concept of numbers sooner or later.

TheKak

I do believe that language has a huge effect on the thought process; we are limited by words our language gives us to describe things.

For instance, the lingustic difference between Chinese and English is amazing. It seems very difficult to get accurate translations between the two, because of the way their language works, not just because of grammatical differences. They have concepts which seem to me to be undiscribable in English, yet simply understood when taken in Chinese, leading me to believe that language does indeed have a very large impact on the way people can think (or more likey how much people are limited by language). It seems mostly this way due to extreme philisophical differences between religions (which always seem to come up with the most abstract ideas, very similar to mathmatics). Just with a language that has no words to describe certain abstract ideas of Eastern philosophy, the language of the tribe has no words to describe what must seem to them the abstract idea of mathmatics.

As a side note, lots of people in the world starve themselves and their family even with food around, as part of religious observance.

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Unright

Writers like George Orwell and Ayn Rand have theorized as much about language being far too critical a tool to be taken lightly. If you eliminate key words like "individual" and "freedom" then all you have is abstract concepts that you can't fully put into words or be able to communicate it to others.

Zdragva

Its probably many of those issues, i dont want to appear racist or anything but i had wondered about their brains tbh, its possible that although they have had contact they have evolved diffently, slightly tho. And its a possibility that the brain might evolve depending on its use, as other parts of the body do too. If u look around it might be inherent racism but there does seem to be cultures or societies that tends to produce great minds or good workers compared to others, but im just theorising. language itself is a vast tool, not only is it how we communicate, mankinds biggest asset is his language and his opposible thumb, but it also affects how we think, i think in english and pictures, thats me being pretty honest and self observant i feel. When writing this post i think in english what i want to say and easily know how to use letters to form words to form sentences etc. to write here, now if ur thinking continuously in a non-expansive way, and i mean ur concentrating on survival and dont think of more 'higher' things like god society etc. and its like this within ur family for a long time, years maybe generations then ur brain is going to adapt, what we use for numbers and logic might be totally taken over in those amazonians brains by something else and that would mean its impossible for them to grasp these concepts. iv heard stories and seen tv programs about ppl with strokes that cure mental illness or that completly alter their view of the world, i saw a report on a guy who had a stroke and couldnt comprehend his own reflection, another guy had a stroke and to him the right hand side of everything he was aware of didnt exist, i.e. if a mirror was in front of him he couldnt grab a pen being held behind his right ear but could grab the pen behind his left ear. not only this but cups placed with the handles pointing to the right would be dropped etc. also i would like to say that each individual person is only a mutation of a basic genotype and that all the different races or hair colours or whatever are only caused by biological mutation and growth, it would be no surprise to find that semi isolated ppl have developed differntetly to others, if they were identical in the way they thought id be worried as science would be wrong :/

MageB420666

Well it could just be the fact that numbers are an abstract concept. Plus if I'm remembering the right tribe they view property and food as communal property, they also have no trade or commerce, which means that they have simply never had a need for numbers. It could also be similar to language learning problems, it is much easier to learn a second language while you are young, and it gets increasingly harder the older you get. So if they are only trying to teach the adult males how to add they might have the same type of diffuculty. I think it is similar to evolution, if you don't need it it doesn't develope, so if they never needed math, never learned it or used it, it could just be that their minds have set in a thought model that does not use numbers, making it pretty much impossible for them to learn the concept. Kind of similar to never using an arm to the point that it has no strength or dexterity and then trying to use it to lift weights or type.

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Halx

Well, these differences may look like HUGE problems to us, they obviously have different values. If they are happy and proud of their own values, then there is nothing wrong with them. If they can resist change from over 200 years of outside exposure, yet still be able to survive strongly, then who are we to judge the worth of their culture? You can get all Christian Missionary on them and condemn them for not having the same values as us, but that won't get me nodding my head.

Remember, fish don't even have long-term memory, yet they continue to fill the ocean. Just because a certain society does not possess the same traits as ours does not mean anything.

So, let's just read about 'em, learn a little bit about psychology from 'em, and leave 'em the fuck alone.

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Halx

I'm fascinated about the links between language and social development. I don't see why people haven't challenged Chomsky's theory more. In practical application, it's so apparent to me when I look at Asian culture vs American culture. Those people THINK different than we do. It's fascinating.

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Phage

I am not saying that their culture should be changed, and I am not attacking their "values". However, surely you can see how given two groups of organisms of the same species, if one has vastly superior technology then they have an obvious advantage right? And also because the group that has inferior technology is the extreme minority it would be appropriate to say that they are deficient in comparison to the "norm". Finally I think we are in agreement that their unique traits are primarily the result of their culture restricting their thought processes from developing.

Therefore: In terms of the survival possibilities of the members of the culture, the culture is deficient.

Fish do not have impressive mental abilities and there are an awful lot of them, but that is not really what we are talking about. If one group of fish, due to their culture were able to build modern technology and drive around the ocean in little tanks and the others were stuck with being just fish you would be willing to label the techno-fish as superior... perhaps even intrinsically rather than attributing it to "culture".

Resisting change is no indication of the worth of a culture, especially one that is not only based out in the middle of nowhere but also renders members mentally incapable of understanding anything else. Just because people have been acting the same way for hundreds of years does not mean that their actions have any more worth than the first time it was done.

The simple fact is that given challenging conditions their tribe, as a result of their culture, would be destroyed long before the rest of the civilised world. This makes their culture inferior.


I thought it would take more time, but PCness is already crippling our ability to reason.

Halx

All I'm saying is 'superior' is a subjective term. They believe they are the superior ones, as stated by the article. To us, they are wrong. To them, we are wrong. Stalemate.

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Phage

A cat is a clichéd example of an animal that considers itself above all other species and in many cases other cats. Cats have survived with little change for thousands of years, and their "culture" has remained fairly constant (eat, sleep, poop, glare at humans for existing).

Humans believe we are superior to cats.
Cats believe they are superior to humans.

This is not a stalemate, it is humans being right and cats being wrong. Their "culture" makes them less likely to survive hardship than humans, so it is inferior.

Do you truly think that the Piraha culture has the same survivability as the math-using majority? If not, you must admit that death = bad and their culture is inferior. Their values may be well and good, but the lack of a numerical system is clearly crippling.

Halx

I believe every statement that you just made is flawed in many ways. In short: I totally, utterly disagree with you.

Different is different. It is not better or worse.

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Phage

So you don't think anything is better or worse? That is pretty interesting, not being able to assign value to anything. You think my point of view is flawed... but don't think that it is worse merely different. So, why not switch to my point of view since yours is no better?

Halx

Comparison is only needed when one tries to supplant the other, such as you trying to convince me to take your point of view. I would be ashamed to condemn or negatively judge another society that is of no consequence to me.

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mo42

I'm with Halx on this one, more or less. It is very difficult to say whether one thing is better or worse than another, because the words "better" and "worse" nearly always have subjective meaning.

As for survival possibilities of the tribe, starving themselves even when food is available can be a very good idea because 1) Their bodies will be running at a metabolism which is sustainable through periods of no food, and 2) What food they don't eat now can probably be eaten later.

I mean, it didn't seem like the article was saying anything about how they starved themselves to death, just they didn't eat when they could have. I think a lot of overweight Americans can learn from that.

chickentribs

At the very least Phage - using your own measure of value, "survivability", the Piraha are running neck and neck with our culture being that they are still around (and getting press!). Who is to say which is better positioned to be functionally the same 100 years from now as a society? I am pretty confident that the Piraha don't have the enemies we do or, God forbid, the technology to blow all of our advancement clean off the planet.

I am no doomsayer - my only point is that if you must rank things as better or worse, it would help to know what their values system holds as important for frame of reference. And of course they still won't care.

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irateplatypus

wow, this makes you wonder if there is something fundamental about science/physics/mathematics that we are missing. if these people's culture can survive for such a long time without something as basic in our society as the most rudimentary math... perhaps there is something that there is something equally revolutionary that is right under our noses every single day?

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Phage

Oh My GOD. DAMN. What the FUCK is wrong with you?

I wonder how crocodiles survived essentially unchanged. How about fish, lizards, plants, every organism on the planet! Those seem to have survived since the dawn of life!

There is something equally revolutionary out there. If they can eat food and stick a dick in a female every few weeks, they will probably survive in a hospitable environment. Just because a culture or species has survived for a long time does not mean that they are anything special.

irateplatypus

wow... i have no idea why you said that or where you were going with it.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Phage

You seem impressed that their culture has lasted for a long time without math, when even a moments thought would remind you that there a millions of species of animals that have survived for as long or longer. While looking for something "revolutionary that is right under our noses every single day" you seem to have forgotten that reproduction does not require math or a complex culture.

We may be missing something fundamental about science/physics/mathematics, but these people are nothing special.

irateplatypus

i'm unconcerned about reproduction or survivability. this article simply made me think that because this culture has gone so long without math occuring to them, maybe there is something just as vast that you or i are fully capable of... but are conditioned by society to not realize or value. i think that is a compelling thought.

frankly, i'm baffled at your repeated insults.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

filtherton

I hear you, irate. I've been wondering lately if the next revolution humanity undergoes will be in a way other than technological. Math and science are swell, but they haven't really done anything to alter the fundamentals of human existence(we eat, sleep, shit, suffer, and die), and this tribe is a reminder of that. Is there a different direction that we, as a species, have completely overlooked?

irateplatypus

yeah, the idea is fascinating. it does seem that what we call progress has a one-dimensional aspect to it. even our solutions to the eat/sleep/shit/suffer/die problems are almost always addressed from a math-science perspective. we look to our concept of what we believe technology to be for every answer, what if there is an entirely new direction to take things that will take us just as far (or farther) than technology has? the example of the piraha makes me open to, if not optimistic about, the possibility of such a thing.

ART,

i traveled japan for 5 weeks this last summer. i was a bit skeptical about the impact language structure/vocabulary has on thought processes, but i am skeptical no more. i wonder if the ideographic written representation has anything to do with it...

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

tecoyah

Truly....an intersting topic, leaves one to think.

Is it possible that the holistic aspects of human thought are the next step in our evolution. Could we indeed, be on the brink of using our minds to "create" reality, as suggested in quantum physics. Perhaps these people have an understanding which we lack, due to our reliance on technology, and thus have missed an important leap in evolution due to lack of metaphysical growth.

Damn....my hippie side is showing.

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ARTelevision

irateplatypus, from my travels in Japan, I'd say that implicit social pressure forms the basis of the Japanese thought process (if there can be said to be such a thing). That's a bit of a different take on the subject - but perhaps not much of one. Traveling in Thailand went a long way toward my conviction that we think only what we can say.

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Ustwo

One thing struck me in the article....

A tribe with no understanding of numbers will have a hell of a time selling nuts. By the pound? By the bag?

Either they are cheated or they are better at numbers then they say.

While language and culture play a big part in mental development, counting is almost elementary. You may not have language for it, but its part of what makes us intelligent. I'd be almost tempted to say the researchers may well be wrong or the people themselves are somehow geneticly lacking in whatever part of the brain deals with numbers.


Something just doesn't seem right here. You have a tribe of only 200 people, who don't seem to have any desire to assimilate, can't count, can't speak other languages beyond a few words, can't draw, and have no words for colors. Before I changed all my theories on human development, I'd take a much closer look and see if the issue is specific to them and not the human condition at large. You can't judge humanity based on an idiot savant or a autistic, and such a condition may well be at work here.

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Ustwo

http://faculty.tc.columbia.edu/uploa...8/Counting.avi

http://faculty.tc.columbia.edu/uploa...8/knocking.avi

A couple of movies of them counting. Saddly not very convincing, but they are pretty short to really show anything different.

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Big Cholla

IMHO, Ustwo hit upon the most likely explanation for the intellectual level of this tribe. i.e. It is a specific issue with the tribe: They live isolated from competition. They live in a hot, humid, forested climate which makes an easy subsistance living for hunter/gathers. They are probably inbred to the nth degree which makes them prone to double-digit I.Q.s. If one's survival is not an issue all sorts of ideas and tools become not worth formulating or creating.

From personal experience with aboriginal tribes, I am guessing that birth position/clanism could also be a factor. When competition is taken away from human development, there can be no synergism of ideas and effort. Individual intellectual effort will never benefit from association with other individuals in the clan system. Their societal situation would never allow an individual (a little brighter than most) to step forward some day and point to a hand saying "look I have this many fingers on this hand and the same on my other hand.....now I can count that many objects". If that individual was not from the most select clan of the tribe, he/she would not be listened to. In a clan based society, it is not permissible or even imaginable to accept new ideas from the lower born. Sadly, the odds against an individual from the birth position of being born to the most select clan also becoming the one person in the whole tribe to develope the ability to see the relationship between fingers and counting objects becomes astronomically high.

The bottom line is that this tribe never has had the need to count specifically in integers for its survival as a group.

tarvuz

I think it is interesting to note that there are Zillions of things WE Americans cannot do or comprehend. What are they? We don't know because we cannot comprehend them. Strange huh?

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tiberry

Seems like the Piraha and I share a similar view of the world.

"You see a glass half filled with water"...is it half full or half empty?

To me, its neither - both are abstract meanings that are irrelevant. Its something to drink.

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