DDRIG: Digital Diagrams: Embodied Numeracy and Knowledge Visualization in the Middle Ages

This project examines the importance of visualization and embodiment in understanding numbers. Specifically, it investigates a diagrammatic and gestural tradition central to medieval mathematics, culture, and daily life: the ancient tradition of finger-counting. For centuries, people depicted and performed numbers using the same powerful finger‑counting system which allowed counting to one million only using the hands.

This in-depth study of the medieval finger-counting tradition contributes to the history of mathematics and computation. The project also engages broader audiences by creating an open-source database, developing an undergraduate course, and sharing findings at international conferences.

The grant will support data collection and archival research. Over one hundred medieval manuscripts and early printed books will be examined and visual, textual, and material data will be collected. This work provide insights into premodern numeracy, embodied cognition, and knowledge transmission, contributing to science and technology studies, art history, and medieval studies.

The project will illuminate how historical practices of visualization and embodiment shaped numerical cognition in the medieval period and will enhance our understanding of premodern numeracy and its implications for cognitive science and the history of technology.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.