Friday, February 15, 2013
Room 300 (Hynes Convention Center)
The “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” as phrased by Eugene Wigner is mirrored in the human sciences. This presentation discusses the inherently mathematical form of cultural constructs considered in anthropology, as exemplified by the structure of kinship terminologies, thereby revealing the way mathematical reasoning is inherent in the logical basis for, and implications of, cultural constructs as systems of ideas.