I have much more to contemplate about this piece, Jaime. While I'm on my way there, what do you think about my conjuring during a Study Group conversation yesterday? The OP was thinking about math being a 'translation' of language, which made me wonder if it was the other way around. I wrote: "I wonder if mathematical concepts actually pre-date language concepts (maybe not just for GLPs but for ALPs also). This doesn't necessarily help what you're thinking about, but it feels to me that if a gestalt is a gestalt is a gestalt and equals one, then the first math, or quantitative analysis predates language development. So if I (either as an ALP or a GLP) start with a whole = 1, then the parts for a GLP are lost in the description of the whole, and the mathematics, so to speak, of division happened long before the mathematics of addition, for a GLP."
You've got me thinking now about something I had never really thought about, but I wonder if our general educational propensity to start with counting, and addition, and number lines is based on what an analytic brain would want, rather than on what a gestalt brain would want.
We always say that for GLPs, we should start with a whole (orange, for example), and divide it up and put it back together. But I have never thought about mathematics being a precursor of language before... "
p.s. to you, Jaime, I wish you would reconsider being a member of the group, and ignore it unless I tagged you... The ensuing conversation there was rich.
Marge, what you’ve written resonates deeply—and what strikes me most is how closely your intuition aligns with what neuroscience is beginning to confirm. fMRI and intracranial studies show that language and mathematics are processed along distinct neural routes: language lives mainly in the perisylvian network—Broca’s, Wernicke’s, and their connecting pathways—whilst mathematical reasoning activates the bilateral intraparietal sulci, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These regions govern spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and proportional awareness rather than linguistic sequencing. Which makes me wonder if what we call “language delay” in GLPs is sometimes a kind of "channel mismatch," not deficiency at all—a fluent, pattern-based mode of reasoning already in play through the parietal system, whilst the linguistic circuits are still finding their connection to it. In that sense, proto-math truly does precede proto-language. Our earliest cognition is rhythmic, spatial, relational—tracking contour, balance, and symmetry before words ever arrive. The gestalt perception you describe aligns almost perfectly with IPS activation—the brain’s way of holding the whole before parsing the parts. So when we say “gestalt patterning is proto-math, not proto-language,” it isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a neurodevelopmental truth. Meaning, for some of us, begins as 4D geometry—an embodied coherence—before it ever becomes syntax.
I have much more to contemplate about this piece, Jaime. While I'm on my way there, what do you think about my conjuring during a Study Group conversation yesterday? The OP was thinking about math being a 'translation' of language, which made me wonder if it was the other way around. I wrote: "I wonder if mathematical concepts actually pre-date language concepts (maybe not just for GLPs but for ALPs also). This doesn't necessarily help what you're thinking about, but it feels to me that if a gestalt is a gestalt is a gestalt and equals one, then the first math, or quantitative analysis predates language development. So if I (either as an ALP or a GLP) start with a whole = 1, then the parts for a GLP are lost in the description of the whole, and the mathematics, so to speak, of division happened long before the mathematics of addition, for a GLP."
You've got me thinking now about something I had never really thought about, but I wonder if our general educational propensity to start with counting, and addition, and number lines is based on what an analytic brain would want, rather than on what a gestalt brain would want.
We always say that for GLPs, we should start with a whole (orange, for example), and divide it up and put it back together. But I have never thought about mathematics being a precursor of language before... "
p.s. to you, Jaime, I wish you would reconsider being a member of the group, and ignore it unless I tagged you... The ensuing conversation there was rich.
Marge, what you’ve written resonates deeply—and what strikes me most is how closely your intuition aligns with what neuroscience is beginning to confirm. fMRI and intracranial studies show that language and mathematics are processed along distinct neural routes: language lives mainly in the perisylvian network—Broca’s, Wernicke’s, and their connecting pathways—whilst mathematical reasoning activates the bilateral intraparietal sulci, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These regions govern spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and proportional awareness rather than linguistic sequencing. Which makes me wonder if what we call “language delay” in GLPs is sometimes a kind of "channel mismatch," not deficiency at all—a fluent, pattern-based mode of reasoning already in play through the parietal system, whilst the linguistic circuits are still finding their connection to it. In that sense, proto-math truly does precede proto-language. Our earliest cognition is rhythmic, spatial, relational—tracking contour, balance, and symmetry before words ever arrive. The gestalt perception you describe aligns almost perfectly with IPS activation—the brain’s way of holding the whole before parsing the parts. So when we say “gestalt patterning is proto-math, not proto-language,” it isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a neurodevelopmental truth. Meaning, for some of us, begins as 4D geometry—an embodied coherence—before it ever becomes syntax.