Periodic Reporting for period 2 - QUANTA (Evolution of Cognitive Tools for Quantification)
Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-08-31
Exact quantification, including the ability to count, depends on both conceptual breakthroughs and cognitive tools such as numeration systems. These tools appear in striking diversity across cultures, and are manifested in different representational formats: as verbal systems, body-based representations, written notations, or in material artifacts. But when, why, and how did these tools emerge and evolve? Reconstructing this evolution is the prime goal of QUANTA, which aims to test two previously untestable key hypotheses: that the conceptual breakthroughs and tools co-evolved, with different modalities coactively scaffolding the breakthroughs; and that the tools diversified in response to changing cultural requirements. Addressing these ambitious objectives requires an unprecedented synergetic combination of (i) archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic insights in worldwide numeration systems, including prehistoric artefacts and symbols, and in contemporary contexts in which quantification occurs and changes; (ii) a cognitive framework for deriving evolutionary hypotheses from system properties; (iii) powerful computational (phylogenetic) methods for testing these hypotheses and thereby reconstructing cultural evolution; and (iv) innovative means to substantially extend the temporal scope of these methods into the past, to include the first attested instances of quantification. By integrating an evolutionary approach with a cognitive perspective on quantification, QUANTA will transform this research field. Its novel strategy will, for the first time ever, yield substantiated insights into the emergence and evolution of numeral systems, thus advancing our understanding of human cognition and its dependence on cultural tools.
Since the beginning of the project, the QUANTA teams have worked with two major tasks – conceptual clarification and the building, completion, and/or consolidation of our major databases. A range of sub-projects involving data analysis and preparation of empirical studies is also underway. (i) The work on conceptual clarification has included defining key concepts, establishing terminological consistency for in-group communication across disciplines, and elaboration on theoretical issues in the philosophy of numbers. (ii) Our major databases are Numeralbank: the verbal systems of number words used in different languages; BodyBase, for body-based representations of number, including those used in sign languages; and one on material artifacts from prehistoric times. Two of these databases have had to be built from scratch, which required a broad variety of sources to be identified, obtained, and screened; the systems described in these sources to be classified and coded in terms of their cognitive properties; and the relevant information to be extracted and entered into the database. Moreover, protocols for data collection, flow, curation, and integration had to be developed and adjusted; and a joint coding grid for aligning the different types of data across representational formats had to be designed and fine-tuned. (iii) The analytical subprojects involve investigations of how various cultural domains (such as games, calendars, or weaving and knot tying) and counting practices influence one another; which role the names of body parts play for the generation of number words; or which cultural factors may have driven changes in counting systems. As much of this work depends on the comprehensiveness of the databases, these downstream projects are work in progress. (iv) Finally, impeded by covid-19 restrictions, the empirical studies to be conducted with indigenous groups in remote areas had to be postponed, but suitable field sites in the Peruvian Amazon have been scouted and secured, and experimental protocols are being developed. (v) Prehistoric artefacts relevant for the project goals were analysed or are in the process of being analysed with novel methodologies. First results of these studies were published or are in press.
Results obtained to date will be published in the subsequent years of the project. Enabled by completion of our innovative large-scale databases, integration of results from across the project components will produce a new scenario on the evolution of precise quantification, and the factors that determine its diversity.