“The Mathematics of Man” by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Abstract

Claude Lévi-Strauss's essay “Les mathématiques de l'homme,” originally published in 1956, is the least known of all his publications. It is also arguably his most prescient, capturing the enduring possibilities and latent pitfalls in anthropology's relationship with mathematics that have continued to beset the discipline to the present day. The aim of presenting a new translation of this essay is to prompt reflections on the changing landscape of research on and teaching of anthropology, which is still as tangled up with the philosophy and practice of mathematics as it was then.