Threaded snail shells, beads on strings, indentations and handprints: people record what repeats itself. We count belongings, loot, money, successes, harvests, likes. We count (one, two, three), order (first, second, third) and summarize (three). Different number systems and calculation methods are still used today.
The numbers we use have a long, fascinating history, which Benjamin Wardhaugh takes us through in his book. Numbers can appear in different ways – as beads on an abacus, lines on the scoreboard or as a series of zeros and ones. We can say that 4567 is a four-digit number, but that’s kind of like describing “Mary” as a “four-letter girl.” Because 4567 is just the representation of a number, not the number itself. But what are the numbers anyway? Do they exist without us? Or do they not exist outside the structures of our world and our brains? There is no easy answer to this.
The history of counting is a journey around the globe and through thousands of years, which is traced here entertainingly and with great attention to detail and documented with countless sources. Benjamin Wardhaugh describes this story as a still-growing tree, deeply rooted and widely branched. Barbara Messing
Benjamin Wardhaugh
To count. The story of the beginnings of mathematics
HarperCollins Publishing, 400 pages, €26
ISBN 978-3-365-00891-1