Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating, untestable, and plausible. Recommended.
Review: "The Math Gene" presents a theory of how mathematical ability and language are related, and how they might have evolved. Devlin starts by separating "number sense" from mathematical ability. Many animals as well as humans can estimate the quantity of something; rats can be taught to press a lever about sixteen times to get a reward. The "about" is significant though; it's an estimate, not an exact count, as far as the rats are concerned. So if number sense and mathematical ability are not the same, what else is needed for mathematics? Devlin lists eight other attributes, including algorithmic ability, a sense of cause and effect, and relational reasoning ability.Then there's a fairly long discussion of mathematics from the inside--are mathematician's brains different? What is it mathematicians do?--including a moderately detailed description of the basics of mathematical groups. I think Devlin does this to provide non-mathematicians with a sense of what mathematics is about, to make the rest of the book more plausible. This section is well-written and fluent, but I found myself getting a little impatient for the meat of his argument, which comes in the last half of the book. I suspect any reader with a good mathematics background would react the same way. The next piece of the argument is to demonstrate that language is unlikely to have developed solely as a result of evolutionary pressure towards communication. This is a subtle point I haven't seen made before, but Devlin (who acknowledges his debts to other workers in this area) makes the case quite convincing. In summary: apart from extremely simple messages like "Danger!" and "Mammoth here" you can't communicate what you don't have a mental representation of. The evolution of communication can't have driven representation; it must have always lagged a half-step behind. So mental representation must have evolved first. I am not doing this argument justice here, but Devlin buttresses it well. The inference is that language is simply a natural but lucky result of our ability to represent the world in our minds. Devlin's key point, however, is that since mathematics is essentially the ability to construct and work with increasingly abstract representations, the same mental changes that gave rise to language have also given rise to mathematics. His conclusion is that we all have the ability to do mathematics: there is no "math gene" except in the same way there is a "language gene": it's universal. As a side note, not critical to his main argument, he points out that the most likely reason for the growth of representational ability in human brains was to foster understanding of other humans in the group; to encourage a sense of group-ness. For a creature that was more effective in group actions (e.g. hunting) there would have been a strong evolutionary advantage to having an emotional investment in the success of the group. Hence much of the early use of this ability would have been to represent others in the group; when language was added, it would have enabled people to talk about each other. In Devlin's words, "Having arisen as a side-effect of off-line thinking, language was immediately hijacked to facilitate gossip." (Off-line thinking is used to mean representational thinking that doesn't result in or from actions in the immediate environment.) Two particular items in the book are worth mentioning. One is a followup to some famous experiments done by child psychologist Piaget in the 1930's. Piaget thought he'd demonstrated that children don't acquire a fully-developed number sense till around six years old. More recent work has demonstrated that children are much smarter than Piaget realized: there was a subtle and fascinating methodological flaw in Piaget's experiment. The second item is a little test of logical reasoning, presented with four cards on a table. Even mathematicians, who will probably get the test right, may be surprised at the coda to the test, which forms one of the few methods of direct verification of Devlin's claim that everyone can do mathematics. The case is well-argued, but one problem with theories like these is that there *are* so few ways of finding out if they're true. "The Math Gene" is reminiscent of Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" in this way; a fascinating argument that we may never be able to test. However, it's thought-provoking and plausible, and left me, at least, convinced of its likely truth.
Rating: 
Summary: An exploration into the origins of mathematical ability
Review: Devlin's "The Math Gene" is a wonderful book, well worth reading if you've an interest in how we think, and absolutely essential if your interest extends further to why we can do mathematics. This is an intriguing question. After all, it's a fairly new part of human behavior - having been around maybe 10,000 years - that we all can do, at least a bit, and the rest of the animal kingdom can't, at least as far as we know. Devlin's the first mathematician I know of who's looked deeply into this subject using recent research in the area; he's done a great job fitting the available data to a theory that starts to answer the question, how it is we can do mathematics? First, though, you have to understand what mathematics really is. Devlin's definition is the "science of patterns" and he explains clearly and convincingly why it's the right one. His premise, roughly, is that however we acquired language, and he stays mostly on the sidelines of the heated debates about that, mathematical ability came along for the ride. His reasoning is that "off-line reasoning" is an essentially equivalent to language, as you can't have one without the other, and that this plus some other abilities, such as a number sense and spatial reasoning, give us the ability to do mathematics. He then explains why so many of us find the subject difficult. A simplified version is that we use language mainly to talk about interpersonal relationships. In a word, gossip. Note he's not claiming this to have been the purpose for it's development, just that it's what we mostly do with it now. And we're very good at gossiping. In fact, it's so easy we consider it to be a form of relaxation. To Devlin, you need to have the same kind of relationship with mathematical objects in order to be able to work with them. The book's greatest strength, to my mind, is its gathering of results in cognitive psychology into a coherently developed thesis regarding the origins of mathematical ability. It's a worthy contribution to the discussion, even if the theory proposed is completely wrong, as it may well be. Devlin's open and clear about it being highly speculative. I do have quibbles, but they're just that. Its major weakness, if the book can be said to have any, is that it doesn't make much by the way of predictions based on his theory, which would make it far more convincing. But this is a terrific starting point for other work.
Rating: 
Summary: For whom this book is not meant
Review: Dont read this book if you are good in mathematics. Most of the book progresses in a very apologetic tone for 'our' incapability in mathematics, and aims to constantly reassure the reader that its not his fault. Very little new ideas here, which one would not come across in Chomsky and other more serious linguists like Pinker. Nothing here about the gene either, which one would not come across in any moderately decent book such as Dawkins, on genetics. This book is avoidable, ... unless you want someone to tell you not to feel bad about scoring zero in Math
Rating:
Summary: How the Public Can be Conned into Buying Based on a Title
Review: I feel like a fool. I thought this book would be about how mathematical thinking evolved (silly me). Instead, page after page after page of common-knowledge information that is presented as an attempt to 'set-up' the thesis. I kept reading, and kept thinking: GET TO THE POINT MAN! And then, when he did get to the point, I sighed heavily and thought: is that all?! Is this news?! Is this REALLY what you spent all this time and effort writing?! Take only one college-level evolution course, and watch only one PBS show about evolution or math or monkeys, and then write your own book. Chances are, the book you write will be much more enlightening than this one.
Rating:
Summary: A book about the origin of gossip
Review: In the book The Math Gene, author Keith Devlin stated that math is just a special use of our language faculty and every one should be able to do math. The basic structure of the book is Prologue, what is math, what is language, and from language to math( the point). We can see this clearly from the last sentence of the prologue," Once you know what mathematics is really about, and once you see how our brains create language, you should find it far less surprising that thinking mathematically is just a specialized form of using our language facility." He spends the first 4 chapters talking about what math is: the science of pattern.
Chapter 2 and 3 is mostly boring to me, maybe people with little math background will appreciate it. Chapter 4 is not bad, especially when he cited the research on animal coating, it is really interesting that the coating of a leopard could be generated by solving math equations. Other examples are also very interesting.
In chapter 5, the author talked about math thinking. It is abstract thinking. Then he used the house metaphor to compare it with daily life. Make it simple to understand for the readers. He also talked about the high concentration you need in doing math problems, this kind of concentration is very hard for ordinary people who are busy worrying about their daily life. And that¡¯s one of major hurdle preventing most people from being good at math. This chapter is quite good. Again chapter 6 and 7 is a bit uninteresting. It talked about what language is. Then in chapter 8 he talked about how math thinking evolved and the idea of offline thinking, how important it is to human, etc. It is an important chapter, though I don¡¯t find it interesting. The best part of the book for me, also the whole point of the book comes last in chapter 9. It tells "why numbers are like gossip". I am very interested to read about it.
It first cited a very common fact: that people like to talk about other people, also they are interested in other people¡¯s lives, it¡¯s like a need for them. Then he said the usefulness of this is that it will benefit the group, make its members more close to each other.
Then he said the same thinking involved could be used in math thinking. How relationship between people in real world could also be applied to the relationships between abstract objects in the imaginary world created by human brain. Then he said why most people can not do math even they have this faculty in them. It is because it takes training most people don¡¯t have. Once those people get training, they will also be able to do math. However most people are not motivated.
And he said how mathematicians are able to do it and how wonderful the math world is. Only people that has reached the summit of one of the many math mountains can see the whole picture and the very picture motivate them to go further. While amateurs and outsiders only walk around the valley and never see the whole picture, and that is why they think math is difficult and uninteresting. Chapter 10 is just citing about some other people¡¯s opinion and his viewpoint on it. The epilogue of the book " how to sell soap" is also quite funny. Overall, it is a worth reading book. It is something new for me. Gives me more insight in language, math and gossip. The idea of the author is quite convincing. Some chapters of the book serve as background knowledge and could be skipped if you already have them. Mainly chapter 2, 3, 6, also chapter 10 could be skipped.
Rating:
Summary: From Dinosaur to Man -- the long journey
Review: The book concerns itself with (educated) speculation on how the human brain acquired the ability to do Maths.
Devlin makes a distinction between Mathematics and Arithmetic. According to him the former has more to do with study of patterns in nature and abstracting these, rather than manipulation of numbers that Arithmetic is concerned with. He says many good mathematicians are quite weak in arithmetic!
He speculates that mathematics emanated from an unlikely ability that early man acquired as he organized into cooperative groups -- the ability to indulge in, and enjoy gossip!
He talks of the complicated pattern of relationships among the characters of typical TV soaps. How any human being can so easily internalise the complex web of relationships in these serials without effort. This, according to him, is because of our innate ability to do maths.
Of course when we replace the characters with symbols like A, B, C and relationships (such as "father of", "friend of", "rival of") with suitable operators, only academic mathematicians are able to handle the resulting abstraction. He claims that "good" (or conventional) mathematicians regard symbols and operators (such as Pi and Sigma) as people and their relationships, and so are able to handle (and even enjoy) the abstraction using the ability we originally acquired for indulging in gossip.
The survival advantage of gossip is that we tend to "empathize" with others whom we "know" about. Which is why we feel terrible when bad things happen to non-existing characters in TV serials. Which is why trained terrorists often avoid "getting to know" their kidnap victims -- or else they will find it terribly difficult to kill them later if required. Thus we are more likely to cooperate with other (genetically distant) members of the group when we are able to gossip about them.
Rating: 
Summary: regretted buying it, regretted reading it
Review: The book sounds promising: how the human species evolved to have the ability of doing math. But the book didn't deliver. First, I think the author assumed that his readers are idiots, because the book is full of trivial, elementary facts about math and human evolution. The chapter "what is this thing called mathematics" is particularly insulting. Second, the author may have some good points on how humans evolved to have math abilities, but these points would be very hard to find--I didn't find them, they are probably somewhere deep underneath all the irrelevant trivias. In general, the writing is incoherent and the choice of the materials is very poor.
Rating:
Summary: 6 great chapters--origin speculation for the rest
Review: The book's first 6 chapters are a marvelous exposition of what math is and sheads important insights on this unique human ability to be mathematical. It may surprise the reader that math is not computational ability. Any human is wired to do math but it does take hard work. Devlin is the best popularizer on mathematics I know. However, I must add that I was dissapointed by his evolutionary speculation as dogma in the concluding chapters. He does state that his theories are the best he can come up with but I feel they do diservice to the marvelous mathematical abilities we have. It is evident that a mystery in this design is recognized and articulated by the author but his explanation that huge amount of monkey-time leading to abstract abilities was a let down for me. Devlin will show you that math is beautiful, orderly and a subject worth tacking by anyone. I regard Devlin as the best writer in demonstrating the awe of the nature of math. This is a good read except for the evolutionary speculation that we will never clearly sort out anyway. If you like math or hate math I recommend his other basic works--they will fill you with wonder and respect for our mathematical world and mind.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful insight into mathematics and human evolution
Review: The Math Gene is a wonderful insight into mathematics and how humans may have evolved the ability for mathematical thought. Dr Devlin gives a powerful argument for his theory in three parts. He begins with an explanation of the nature of mathematics, and dispells many misconceptions about math held by people outside of the mathematics community. He then spends the bulk of his text describing the nature and evolution of language and communication in humans and their differences with animals in that respect. He explains what pressures in the environment would be necessary to cause an evolutionary change in language and thought in a way that is understandable by a layperson and plausable to someone with a strong scientific background. He ends his book with a comparison of the mind's mathematical and language processes, why language (particularly gossip) must have preceded mathematical thought, and why mathematical thought is a direct product of any consciousness capable of language. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and have recommended it to friends and colleages alike. I would also recommend another one of Devlin's books, The Language of Mathematics, for a glimpse into the diverse and beautiful world of math any person could understand and appreciate.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful insight into mathematics and human evolution
Review: The Math Gene is a wonderful insight into mathematics and how humans may have evolved the ability for mathematical thought. Dr Devlin gives a powerful argument for his theory in three parts. He begins with an explanation of the nature of mathematics, and dispells many misconceptions about math held by people outside of the mathematics community. He then spends the bulk of his text describing the nature and evolution of language and communication in humans and their differences with animals in that respect. He explains what pressures in the environment would be necessary to cause an evolutionary change in language and thought in a way that is understandable by a layperson and plausable to someone with a strong scientific background. He ends his book with a comparison of the mind's mathematical and language processes, why language (particularly gossip) must have preceded mathematical thought, and why mathematical thought is a direct product of any consciousness capable of language. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and have recommended it to friends and colleages alike. I would also recommend another one of Devlin's books, The Language of Mathematics, for a glimpse into the diverse and beautiful world of math any person could understand and appreciate.
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