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Part and Whole Numbers: an ‘Enumerative’ Reinterpretation of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits and its Subjects.
Author(s) -
Pickles Anthony J.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4461.2009.tb00066.x
Subject(s) - reinterpretation , materiality (auditing) , enumeration , representation (politics) , point (geometry) , history , epistemology , sociology , anthropology , genealogy , mathematics , philosophy , aesthetics , combinatorics , geometry , politics , political science , law
From the starting point that concepts of number can contain within them a representation of a society's overall cosmology, reinforcing and strengthening its reality in logical terms through practice (a process I call enumeration), this paper charts the meeting of two systems of enumeration. As such systems are constantly changing, we concentrate on a particular point in time and space: the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (CAETS) in 1898. Here a nineteenth century anthropology obsessed with reinforcing its position as science through the mathematicalisation of its methods met a Melanesian enumerative system bound to materiality and pattern. The conflict between intentionally abstractive and intensely material enumerative systems generated perplexing results which throw their underlying cosmologies into greater relief.