The main problem of the article is to consider the humanitarian foundations of mathematics, which make it possible to develop new approaches to the knowledge of the world. The relevance of this research consists in the formation of modern epistemological models that meet the latest views on the correlation of humanitarian and mathematical knowledge. The novelty of the presented approach in the article is determined by the description and study of the concept of “birth” of a number, suggesting to see in the number the analogy of birth, the stadiality of growth. The number is considered as an element of the existential paradigm of cognition of being, the attitude to accepting the birth of a number opens up new facets of consistency between the humanities and the calculus, forms a special toolkit for considering the possibilities of the union of humanities and mathematics. The result of the research is the development of a philosophical and cultural categorical apparatus that allows describing the “birth” of a number. The conclusions of the study are the disclosure of the complex genesis of the number, consisting of the dual origin of the number: from the axiomatics preceding the experience and from the “circular-linear” experimental knowledge; description of the conditions for the appearance of the number in the world, its “genitive map”, the history of the formation of the number; comprehension of the mentality of the number, including motor skills and ways of interaction of the number with the surrounding reality; formulation of a “pedological” way of comprehending a number in its dynamic quantity, in its vital transition to an organic fusion of divisibility-unity, abstractness-concreteness, reality-nominality, ordinality-cardinality; demonstration of the stages of the number's entry into the world leading to the acquisition of a state of epistemological balance between the humanities and mathematics.