About QUANTA
Things come in specific quantities, and numbers are everywhere: when we trade, participate in a competition, or try to get a pandemic under control.
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The symbolic systems that capture such quantities are our cognitive tools for quantification, and we employ them to understand and transform the world.
- When, why, and how did humans develop these tools?
- Why do they differ so massively across cultures?
Finding answers to these questions is the prime goal of QUANTA. To achieve this, we will combine approaches and methods from anthropology, archaeology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and psychology. If successful, our project will transform our understanding of how a fundamental (and uniquely) human characteristic emerged and diversified: our ability to quantify.
12.11.2021