How Humans Learn(ed) to Do Mathematics

Why is it that every human, but no animal, can learn to count with exact numbers? And why did the mathematical abilities of humans develop at all over the course of evolution? In this engaging and accessible overview – readable even for nonexperts – mathematician Frieder Hermann outlines the current state of our knowledge on these questions. The range of topics spans from psychological experiments on the mathematical abilities in babies and children to the latest findings in autism research. This book is a translation of the original German second edition. The translation was done with the help of an artificial intelligence machine translation tool. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book may read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.