#30DaysOfScikuChallenge
Math Scikus
A real number of science-haikus.
Proposition
Nascent Logic Dawns
Propose “Bone” before counting
Mathematic’s birth
The Ishango bone from Africa, more than 20,000 years old, shows that counting may be as old as humans. But animal testing shows that monkeys, chimpanzees, and crows can quantify as well, so the roots of math may tunnel far into our evolutionary past, deep within our piles of genetic code….
Some of that code echoes from our single-celled origins within the midnight Hadean depths of submarine vents. Those single cells surely could not count, but their survival required following the trail of a chemical scent, a skill that biologists call chemotaxis… tumbling along with the faint whiff of a chemical, a food to its most concentrated origins, like a single-celled bloodhound. The automated ability to chase “More” is built into our Biology.
While a crow chooses a bigger pile of corn over a smaller one, does the concept of “more” or “less” interpose between avian observation and action? Does the idea of “one” or “zero” flash before the corvid brain? Or are counting crows merely a more complex version of chemotaxis, of chasing More?
