ABSTRACT
One general characteristic of Hallpike’s zealous acceptance of Piaget’s theory is non-reflectiveness in regard to epistemic position of Piaget’s psychology vis-a-vis a wider universe of scientific ideas upon which Piaget’s view of human cognition is created. Prior to invoking Piaget, Hallpike could have pondered closely over the systematic properties of systems of ‘primitive’ enumeration rather than discounting them as a merely ‘physical enumeration’ or recitation of ‘the names of numbers’. The whole history of anthropological understanding can be interpreted in exactly this perspective, of attempt to account for the savage other through the framework of our scientific rationality. ‘Mathematical entities consist of structures in a pure state, free from any embodiment’, says Levi-Strauss, thus perpetrating a view of mathematics as a kind of ultimate spiritual liberation that rational mind makes possible for humanity. In order to investigate nature and reality of number in a particular culture, the prospective ethnographer does not need Piaget to tell him what that concept is.
