String Figures as Mathematics?: An Anthropological Approach to String Figure-making in Oral Tradition Societies (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Book 36)

This book addresses the mathematical rationality contained in the making of string figures. It does so by using interdisciplinary methods borrowed from anthropology, mathematics, history and philosophy of mathematics. The practice of string figure-making has long been carried out in many societies, and particularly in those of oral tradition. It consists in applying a succession of operations to a string (knotted into a loop), mostly using the fingers and sometimes the feet, the wrists or the mouth. This succession of operations is intended to generate a final figure. The book explores different modes of conceptualization of the practice of string figure-making and analyses various source material through these conceptual tools: it looks at research by mathematicians, as well as ethnographical publications, and personal fieldwork findings in the Chaco, Paraguay, and in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, which all give evidence of the rationality that underlies this activity. It concludes that the creation of string figures may be seen as the result of intellectual processes, involving the elaboration of algorithms, and concepts such as operation, sub-procedure, iteration, and transformation. Front Matter....Pages i-xix Introduction....Pages 1-9 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 String Figures and Ethnography....Pages 13-25 A Conceptualization of String Figure-Making....Pages 27-68 Front Matter....Pages 69-69 W.W. Rouse Ball’s Mathematical Approach to String Figures....Pages 71-110 Thomas Storer and the Concept of Heart-Sequence....Pages 111-148 Front Matter....Pages 149-149 Heart-Sequences and “Look-Alike” String Figures....Pages 151-184 Understanding Transformations....Pages 185-220 Front Matter....Pages 221-221 Cultural and Cognitive Aspects of String Figure-Making in Two Different Societies....Pages 223-267 Comparison of the Trobriander and Guarani-Ñandeva String Figure Corpora....Pages 269-352 Conclusion....Pages 353-368 Back Matter....Pages 369-392