The devil and the hidden life of numbers: Translations and transformations in Amazonia: The Inaugural Claude Lévi-Strauss lecture

Abstract

The notion of “aberrant derivations,” coined by Lévi-Strauss in The origin of table manners in his discussion of the strange sums made by Native American peoples, take us to an usual starting point-mathematics, to explore the theme of the transformations arising from the encounter between Amerindian peoples and whites in Amazonia, among them the conversion of Christianity.