Monkeys eat fruit of which there is often a glut. They are very careful selectors of which of the fruit to eat in terms of perfect quality, but I don't know that they have any means of storing them or go in for exchange in any way.

Numbers describe both a quality of a material object or set of objects and enable us to analyse various quantifiable relationships between material objects. Computation, algebra are tools for that analysis.

Like writing, they capture and record a thought process about material things. Thinking is a product of our brains in their interaction with the material world. Thought reflects, more or less accurately, the material world.

cactus flower wrote:

Monkeys eat fruit of which there is often a glut. They are very careful selectors of which of the fruit to eat in terms of perfect quality, but I don't know that they have any means of storing them or go in for exchange in any way.

Numbers describe both a quality of a material object or set of objects and enable us to analyse various quantifiable relationships between material objects. Computation, algebra are tools for that analysis.

Like writing, they capture and record a thought process about material things. Thinking is a product of our brains in their interaction with the material world. Thought reflects, more or less accurately, the material world.

Yes but what's at the source of thought? Cad é foinse feasa? Bolg fís, an ea.

The source of thought?? Thought is just another aspect of the patterns that we form part of and are made up of.

You may as well ask what is the essence and meaning of existence. Asking such a question without positing or considering a particular view or approach would be beyond irritating.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

The source of thought?? Thought is just another aspect of the patterns that we form part of and are made up of.

You may as well ask what is the essence and meaning of existence. Asking such a question without positing or considering a particular view or approach would be beyond irritating.

Sorry to blunder so vaguely into that. Imo thought is something we now know quite a lot about physiologically and it is a brain-located process that takes place in humans and animals in order to effectively grasp the material characteristics of the world we live in. If someone is lobotomised it affects their thought processes and if someone is kept in a dark cell for years it affects their thought processes. It came up because numbers can have the appearance of being very abstract. Imo they are a reflection, processed in the brain, of an aspect of material existence.

cactus flower wrote:

There are some studies that claim to show that elephants can count. I'm not sure that they do this through any concept of what we think of as numbers. It might be interesting to take a look.

I had always assumed that serious counting started, like writing, when agriculture started and surpluses were produced and recorded. Up until then, there wasn't enough of anything for it to be worth counting.

Except ones children I imagine.

riadach wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

There are some studies that claim to show that elephants can count. I'm not sure that they do this through any concept of what we think of as numbers. It might be interesting to take a look.

I had always assumed that serious counting started, like writing, when agriculture started and surpluses were produced and recorded. Up until then, there wasn't enough of anything for it to be worth counting.

Except ones children I imagine.

That is a very good point Riadach. Although I don't think ducks can count theirs, from my observation of them. And I once found one on the London Underground (child not duckling) who had been left behind on the train by one of those maths teachers we were talking about.

I wasn't having a go at you CF. It was TGOC who asked what the source of thought was. Sorry for any confusion.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

I wasn't having a go at you CF. It was TGOC who asked what the source of thought was. Sorry for any confusion.

That's OK. Zhou. One should never go near these questions before breakfast, anyway. Asking for trouble.

The wiki says that tallying numbers may go back 30,000 years (so you could count your children with notches on a stick) and that place value systems ( using symbols 1-9 for numbers above 9) have only been around since about 3,800 B.C. - that perhaps would be the agricultural thing kicking in.

Is dúchas fód fheasa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number

Wiki link on numbers - I forgot to post it before. Fascinating stuff.

I love the idea of perfect numbers as well, like 6 and 28. Their factors, when added together, equal that of which they are. It's fun to go try to find them.

Pi is also quite interesting in how it just keeps going and going. It's like the square root of 5.

Lads I need a bit of help. I was doing some work on my Higher Geometry forum and I seem to have locked everything up.

I can log in as administrator, but if I try to do anything else, such as log in as another user, or simply view it, I get the message,

The administrator of this forum is processing a maintenance. You can’t access this forum for the moment.

For more details, contact the administrator of this forum.
I am the administrator, so I'm not much use to myself.
I tried searching in the Forum of the Forum, but there's just too much information.
Any ideas?

cactus flower wrote:

riadach wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

There are some studies that claim to show that elephants can count. I'm not sure that they do this through any concept of what we think of as numbers. It might be interesting to take a look.

I had always assumed that serious counting started, like writing, when agriculture started and surpluses were produced and recorded. Up until then, there wasn't enough of anything for it to be worth counting.

Except ones children I imagine.

That is a very good point Riadach. Although I don't think ducks can count theirs, from my observation of them. And I once found one on the London Underground (child not duckling) who had been left behind on the train by one of those maths teachers we were talking about.

I'd say with any litter of higher mammals, that if one was missing the mother would notice. Whether she notices because she can actually count the number in her litter, or because she is used to the cocophony of smells, or symphony of sounds, and thus knows automatically when one is missing, is probably a different question.

TheGeniusOfCork wrote:

Lads I need a bit of help. I was doing some work on my Higher Geometry forum and I seem to have locked everything up.

I can log in as administrator, but if I try to do anything else, such as log in as another user, or simply view it, I get the message,

The administrator of this forum is processing a maintenance. You can’t access this forum for the moment.

For more details, contact the administrator of this forum.
I am the administrator, so I'm not much use to myself.
I tried searching in the Forum of the Forum, but there's just too much information.
Any ideas?

You could make me, Number Nine, Administrator

Did you go into utils and run a backup or anything? you might have some process going there - some program running.

Done

TheGeniusOfCork wrote:

Done

I can't access the forum either, even as Admin. Have you tried logging out and back in again? I think you have a root account and an Admin account. While you are logged out as root Admin some process might stop. Log out as root Admin and log in as a normal Admin.

Scratch that - go into Admin as root and find "Forum Under Construction" (General/Configuration) It's switched to YES - switch it to NO.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030403073214.htm

coots can count - says this study

and this one says monkeys can too

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/05/coolsc.countingmonkeys/index.html

Connecting the dots
Nieder and his colleagues spent about nine months training and testing two rhesus monkeys. The monkeys looked at a computer screen, which displayed from one to five dots. After a one second interval, a second screen appeared. If it had the same number of dots as the first, the monkeys were taught to release a lever. Their reward for recognizing matching numbers of dots was a sip of apple juice.
Scientists found that rhesus monkeys could tell whether two successive displays on the computer contained the same number of dots.
Researchers monitored the monkeys through microelectrodes in the prefrontal cortex of their brains. This region has a variety of functions that involve some type of abstract thinking. In a human, for example, learning how to respond to traffic lights would involve the prefrontal cortex; pulling a hand away from a hot stove would not.

Different neurons in the monkeys showed more activity when encountering different numbers of dots. For example, one neuron would "like" the number three, and show heavy brain activity; another would get excited by the number five

Auditor #9 wrote:

Scratch that - go into Admin as root and find "Forum Under Construction" (General/Configuration) It's switched to YES - switch it to NO.

That's fine.

Tonight I was trying to host some flash files and I got into a muddle. Any recommendations. Tomorrow will do.

TheGeniusOfCork wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Scratch that - go into Admin as root and find "Forum Under Construction" (General/Configuration) It's switched to YES - switch it to NO.

That's fine.

Tonight I was trying to host some flash files and I got into a muddle. Any recommendations. Tomorrow will do.

Do you mean youtube files? I can help you out there if you do ...

Instructions on posting a youtube video

Ho! Audi. Did Ennis win the Tidy Towns or wot!

cactus flower wrote:

Ho! Audi. Did Ennis win the Tidy Towns or wot!

Yep. They're lucky my bedroom isn't visible to the judges though.

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Ho! Audi. Did Ennis win the Tidy Towns or wot!

Yep. They're lucky my bedroom isn't visible to the judges though.

Penalties ?

for cf



this is hosted using PicPanda, but it is extremely akward, also there is no obvious support for resources. Is there any alternative to getting my own site again.

That's very nice TGO'C. I could look at it for hours. Are you developing a teaching software? I don't know anything about that really, except that Kate P says I think that they need to fit the curriculum if schools are going to buy into them.

But I think parents buy them for children too.

Or as you say, there's the potential for a website, but it would have to carry ads to make money and that would be a pity.

I like the seeing graphic. It has a pleasantly hypnotic quality.