By Gary Urton

ISBN-10: 029278533X

ISBN-13: 9780292785335

ISBN-10: 0292785348

ISBN-13: 9780292785342

Unraveling the entire mysteries of the khipu—the knotted string gadget utilized by the Inka to list either statistical information and narrative debts of myths, histories, and genealogies—will require an realizing of the way quantity values and family members could have been used to encode info on social, familial, and political relationships and buildings. this can be the matter Gary Urton tackles in his pathfinding research of the foundation, which means, and importance of numbers and the philosophical ideas underlying the perform of mathematics between Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes.

Based on fieldwork in groups round Sucre, in south-central Bolivia, Urton argues that the starting place and that means of numbers have been and are conceived of by means of Quechua-speaking peoples in methods just like their principles approximately, and formulations of, gender, age, and social kinfolk. He additionally demonstrates that their perform of mathematics relies on a well-articulated physique of philosophical rules and values that displays a continual try to retain stability, concord, and equilibrium within the fabric, social, and ethical spheres of neighborhood life.

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The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic by Gary Urton


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