Though he admits to not being particularly good at math, Butterworth (cognitive neuropsychology, U. College, London), the founder of the Mathematical Cognition journal, contends that we all possess an inherent "numerosity" sense developed to different degrees of course. The author bases his case on empirical research and historical speculation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) At first glance, neuropsychologist Brian Butterworth's What Counts: How Every Brain Is Hardwired for Math might infuriate mathphobes who insist that they just can't get a handle on numbers. Could it be true that natural selection produced brains preprogrammed with multiplication tables? Read a few pages, though, and you'll see that Professor Butterworth has more than a little sympathy for the arithmetically challenged, and indeed confesses that he too has a hard time with figures. His thesis isn't that we are born doing math, but that we are born with a faculty for learning math, much like our ability to learn language. He goes on to argue that unique individual differences in this faculty combine with our educational experiences to make us either lightning calculators or klutzes who can't figure tips. Butterworth's style is perfect for his subject, seamlessly weaving scholarly analysis with down-to-earth humor and practical examples that will satisfy the researcher and the lay reader alike. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, and his own neuropsychology, he makes his case like a masterful attorney while remaining careful to leave room for scientific falsification. The history of counting is engrossing and will be new to many readers, as it has been a rather arcane field until recently--but it's just one of the many new vistas opened for the readers of What Counts . --Rob Lightner Butterworth is a neuropsychologist (professor of cognitive neuropsychology at University College London) rather than a mathematician, but he has thought and read extensively about how people deal with math and has concluded that a basic mathematical ability is inborn. He notes that "everyone can count or tally up small collections of objects, and can carry out simple arithmetical operations, whether they are Cambridge graduates or tribesmen in the remote fastnesses of the New Guinea highlands." Why, then, do so many people have a hard time with more advanced forms of mathematics? Because "maths more than any other subject is sensitive to earlier failures to understand." And how well children understand "depends on how well they learn at each stage, and this in turn depends on how well the curriculum is designed and the teaching is carried out." Butterworth writes engagingly about the hardwiring of the brain for mathematical fundamentals and about the amazing quantity of numbers that each of us confronts every day. A neuropsychologist (University College, London) argues that the ability to do math is inborn, not learned. Butterworth proposes a ``number module'' in the brain, containing the ability to count and to understand numbers. The evidence for this is drawn from history, animal studies, infant learning, and an impressive range of other disciplines. While few of us are professional mathematicians, numbers are an inescapable feature of everyone's life: grocery prices, phone numbers, children's ages, sports scores, speed limits, interest rates, and many other examples. The ability to use these numbers on some basic level appears to be as widespread as the ability to use language; yet the two appear not to be directly related. Number systems were developed independently in several parts of the world, and there are marked differences between them; the Babylonians used a base of 60, the Mayans one of 20, as counterexamples to the 10-based math Western cultures use. This argues against some single prehistoric genius having come up with an idea that then diffused to other cultures. In fact, the ability to distinguish between quantities and to perform primitive calculation seems inherent in infants and even in those animals and birds that have been tested. Studies of stroke patients who have lost their math ability indicates that key mathematical functions reside in the left parietal lobe of the brain. A fascinating chapter on the history of various methods of counting on fingers (or other body parts) shows a similar relationship between another specific brain region and math ability. Other chapters explore the question of why some of us are particularly good or bad at math and the ways that children learn math at home, on the streets, and in school. Butterworth writes clearly and entertainingly, with plenty of examples drawn from everyday life and flashes of humor that belie the notion that math is a dry subject. A pioneering study of a fascinating area of the human mind. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Jonathan Miller author of Darwin for Beginners Butterworth is one of the mo