A booklet came with the series. I'll look through it later, but that's what he said. And in fact the graphic of five sheep on the screen did have me counting. In chess I would think it's not a matter of counting but of recognizing patterns, no? He said too that the development of an understanding of numbers of humanity as a whole going back to 30,000 BCE parallels a child's learning of numbers. It occurred to me that if something as seemingly intuitive as counting has to be painstakingly learned and then taught (some societies use 1,2,many), then parenting is in the same category, and no wonder humanity is so messed up, as history tells us. Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>crows can count to the number four, which is as high as humans can recognize in one clump, say four sheep. More than four of something we have to count. That simply can't be true. Merely playing chess disproves that "recognition clump" of four. Does the lecture cite a cognitive science source for their contention? Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.