A child was learning to count. He was saying, one, two, three, five, seven, four...It is obvious he was not doing it right, but it struck me that the order has a relation to time.
Counting, can happen without equal items like marbles. As the child did the order is time related. He was not counting something like marbles, from by heart, from his memory, he was reciting the numbers in order. He said "one" first, then "two", next "three", balance though he knew the words for the numbers, he couldn't remember the order properly.
This reflects a cardinal point! Counting is related to time. It is related to before and after.
First you have a set of labels, a set of names, say, first of all these labels do not have any meaning. One person gives an order for the labels. He recite the labels in that order. The others follow, and everyone learns to recite I the same order. That is counting. No equal items were involved.
Then counting had to be useful. Or else there's no difference between counting and a song.
When there are marbles, and while counting we will be putting marbles in to a box, we give meaning to the counting song.
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