Andy,
I really like your evaluation of the taken-for-granted status of money in
the studies you just cited concerning money-mediated exchange and the
development of mathematical concepts. There is something of a historical
problem here however. The meso- and south american cultures developed very
sophisticated mathematical systems but did not have money or markets and
were most certainly not capitalist cultural systems. The Mayan calendar was
based on a highly developed vegisemal system that included the zero which
didn't appear in the west until approx. 700 a.d. This would be equivalent
in more general cultural evolutionary terms to the stage of Sumerian,
Egyptian, and other early states. The Andean people, most notably the Inca,
used an accounting system based on knotted cords, the quipu. Although
Vygotsky and Luria used the quipu as an example of a mnemonic sign system,
more contemporary research by the mathematician Martha Ascher and her
husband Robert, an anthropologist, showed that in fact the quipu utilized a
very sophisticated system of mathematical reasoning akin to matrix algebra.
Similarly, anthropologist/wild man John Earls showed very profound
mathematical principles at operation in other elements of high Andean
cultural development systems; eg, the ceque system. The relationship of
mathematics to political power: human over nature and other humans is
implicated in both of these however.
Paul H. Dillon
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