In this special issue, La Recherche devotes a feature of nearly fifty pages to reminding us that numbers are one of the foundations of mathematics education—and that they still hold many mysteries. Do newborns have number sense? What about animals such as birds and bees? Where does arithmetic processing take place in the brain? What do we measure with numbers, and why? How do the social sciences use them? And, for that matter, which numbers do we use? Featuring Véronique Izard, Marie Amalric and Avner Bar-Hen, among others, this issue offers an overview of the very latest findings.
The icing on the cake: alongside this feature, an outstanding article traces the story of the 2020 decipherment of Linear Elamite, a writing system used in the south of present-day Iran between the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE.
"Numbers" feature. La Recherche, January–March 2023, 146 pages, €9.90.
