In this new provocative study Butterworth argues that our genes contain a set of instructions for building a 'mathematical brain', and this is why, without benefit of teaching, human beings are born to count.
He takes us on a riviting biological and historical journey from tally marks on the walls of Ice Age caves and the body-counting of New Guinea to his own cutting-edge reseach on mathematical brains, normal and abnormal. He tells us about the bookkeeper who could no longer count above four, and about the science graduate who has to solve the simplest problems by counting on his fingers, as well as about the calculating prodigy who can find powers and roots in seconds.
