What would a world without math be like?

The same as it is today, but imagine society somewhere in the earliest age of Babylon..In fact, imagine Bronze age. Something like that.

You may even look up to tribal societies, you have plenty information on tribes that don’t exist or still exist. If they have math, it’s something in it’s simplest form.

Hope I helped. Peace!

What counts as maths?
If counting counts (heh), then the world would be full of really stupid animals, because even fish can count.

We, along with some other animals, are born being able to recognize numbers from 1 to 3 and maybe slightly beyond. This isn’t really math. It is more like pattern recognition. There are some hunter gatherer societies now that have no words for numbers greater than 3.

I would think that a society without numbers would have to be hunter gatherers or have some similar nomadic structure. Once people settle down and produce agricultural surplus, there needs to be a way of equating agricultural products with each other and with other items, and there is no way of doing this without a numerical system.

It would look neolithic.

It couldn’t / wouldn’t exist. Everything is based on math in some way. Animals have four feet. Members of the tribe have to eat, and math would be used to figure out how many buffalo to kill to feed the tribe.

Your premise is not realistic.

It would be like paleolithic society. You’d have nothing even remorely resembling science.

It would be like dealing with toddlers, all the time. That’s the level you’d have to revert to.

Up until recently, my daughter basically understood up to about the number 5, and then everything was “lots” or unreasonably large numbers that just mean “lots”. For example, I asked how old she thought I was, and she said I’m 25,000 years old.

So if you tried to set up trade with a toddler, prices would be $1, $2, $3, and LOTS! No fractions, no complications, just swapping small amounts, or vague large ones.

I think travel would be like the book Where the Wild Things Are

and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max
and he sailed off through night and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year
to where the wild things are.

Vague words used to try and convey approximations.

I think that’s life without math.

You say written math was never developed. OK, that’s cool. There have been lots of illiterate societies that made things work for a long time. People still do math-y things, even if they don’t know what the word “hypotenuse” means.

I’d look at known illiterate societies in human history for inspiration. May I suggest Iron age, and Early Medieval Ireland? Not the monasteries, mind – those were built by literate priests who gained knowledge from study with Rome – but the villages.

There are no urban areas. Homes are rough-shod, but tribal chieftains were able to build entirely synthetic islands on which to live (the Google word there is crannog). There’s no known intricate architecture outside of the monasteries, but damn if they didn’t make some fine goldwork

They had a goods-based economy, so no fiat currency. Most things’ value was based on an equivalent value of a cow.

They had an intricate legal system that functioned without “police” to enforce it. If you were found guilty of causing harm to a party, your family could be sentenced to pay to the victim’s family a certain number of cows, based on the victim’s honor price. The honor price was set based on a person’s status in the also-intricate caste system.

An important feature of their civilisation is the filidh class, whose job was essentially to memorize the law and recite and interpret it at will. Knowledge was passed from one person to another by rote, instead of by writ.

So, there’s plenty of civilisation to be found in an illiterate society. It’s just harder for historians to study cultures that don’t write shit down, and that is why we don’t hear much about them in high school.

I would ask how absent the concept of math needs to be from this society you envision and are they humanoids or alien in being. I say this because the genesis of math goes WAY back in time. There is evidence that even hunter gathers used a tally system and centers around prime numbers in multiples of 2 and 10. The 10 makes perfect sense as humans have 10 finger and 10 toes…2 arms, 2 legs etc.

The OP is pretty clear in her details that her civilisation is simply illiterate, not that they are subhuman.

Also, prime numbers are by definition not multiples of 2 and 10.

There would be no taxes and no IRS and we’d still be trading beads and feathers and animal skins for currency.

@Seek You must have more description on your screen as I see nothing that describes what the civilization is like or whether they are illiterate or not. All I know is there is no written universal language or written math. I don’t want to assume anything is all and would help me imagine what this world would indeed be like sans math in their lives. As it is, I imagine a tribal like society where everything is documented in song, folk lore/stories or religious verses and handed down though the years if they even have years yet.

Welcome to Fluther. Thanks for one of the most entertaining questions of recent memory. And my memories go back to… well, “some time ago”.

The world you posit would be twice as good as the one we live in now. Oh, wait, I mean ten times as good. Maybe half as good; I’m not sure.

At least there wouldn’t be any poverty, since no one could measure relative wealth. And everyone would live to the ripe old ago of “whatever”.

Upon further reflection, this is the actual state of Lake Woebegone, where the children would all be of above-average intelligence.

Upon even more reflection, I think, or maybe less (because there’s no way to tell), there would be no Perfect-Fish award and no lurve. Or maybe infinite lurve; who would know?

A society with multiple divisions, added to which, an incalculable sense of loss, you can count on it

you HAVE to watch this movie. http://www.flatlandthemovie.com/

Math was developed for trade and accounting. If math was never developed, then trade and economies and currencies never were either. With no written language there is no literature. Stoneage type groups have no written language. All information would need to be oral tales and perhaps pictographs on walls.

@CWOTUS The world you describe could only mean one thing….no birthday parties. Oh the pain

That’s a dystopian way of looking at the world, @Cruiser.

On the other hand: Every day is Friday. Every day is payday. Every day is the end of the month (or the first of the month, depending on whether you’re paying rent or collecting it), and random birthdays. (Random uncounted birthdays.)

Of course, no one knows how many shopping days until Christmas, so there is always that uncertainty. But on the other other hand (and without math there are also “other hands” without counting), the Christmas decorations are never too early, and are never left up too long.

On another other hand, every woman would be a “ten” … except those soreheads who want to say that a “ten” ain’ nothin’ but a number, and without math numbers mean nothing.

This future (or past, because without math, who would be able to tell the difference?) seems like it could be a scary, funny place … with a lot of hot women of indeterminate age.

@CWOTUS You seem to miss math with common sense. I can assure you that people still know about past and future, have aesthetics, and differ one thing from another, even without math.

Being illiterate does not mean being mentally handicapped….

I have thought about this one for a minute.

I don’t think a world, society would get very far without math.

It seems necessary for construction, agriculture, navigation, trade, etc.

The problem is that math is a fundamental part of our everyday lives whether we think about it or not. Without at least basic arithmetic, I’m not too sure how anyone would not only be able to live a quality life, but even survive. At best humans would be nothing more than a very rudimentary species without at least basic math being a part of their lives. Math is pure logic after all.