Mathematical Cultures: The London Meetings 2012-2014 (Trends in the History of Science)

This collection presents significant contributions from an international network project on mathematical cultures, including essays from leading scholars in the history and philosophy of mathematics and mathematics education. Mathematics has universal standards of validity. Nevertheless, there are local styles in mathematical research and teaching, and great variation in the place of mathematics in the larger cultures that mathematical practitioners belong to. The reflections on mathematical cultures collected in this book are of interest to mathematicians, philosophers, historians, sociologists, cognitive scientists and mathematics educators.--Résumé de l'éditeur Front Matter....Pages i-viii Editorial Introduction....Pages 1-6 Front Matter....Pages 7-7 Understanding the Cultural Construction of School Mathematics....Pages 9-23 Envisioning Transformations—The Practice of Topology....Pages 25-50 Creative Discomfort: The Culture of the Gelfand Seminar at Moscow University....Pages 51-70 Mathematical Culture and Mathematics Education in Hungary in the XXth Century....Pages 71-89 On the Emergence of a New Mathematical Object: An Ethnography of a Duality Transform....Pages 91-110 What Are We Like .......Pages 111-125 Mathematics as a Social Differentiating Factor: Men of Letters, Politicians and Engineers in Brazil Through the Nineteenth Century....Pages 127-138 “The End of Proof”? The Integration of Different Mathematical Cultures as Experimental Mathematics Comes of Age....Pages 139-160 Front Matter....Pages 161-161 Diversity in Proof Appraisal....Pages 163-179 What Would the Mathematics Curriculum Look Like if Instead of Concepts and Techniques, Values Were the Focus?....Pages 181-188 Mathematics and Values....Pages 189-214 Purity as a Value in the German-Speaking Area....Pages 215-234 Values in Caring for Proof....Pages 235-257 An Empirical Approach to the Mathematical Values of Problem Choice and Argumentation....Pages 259-269 The Notion of Fit as a Mathematical Value....Pages 271-285 Mathematical Pull....Pages 287-302 Front Matter....Pages 303-303 Mathematics and First Nations in Western Canada: From Cultural Destruction to a Re-Awakening of Mathematical Reflections....Pages 305-328 Remunerative Combinatorics: Mathematicians and Their Sponsors in the Mid-Twentieth Century....Pages 329-346 Calling a Spade a Spade: Mathematics in the New Pattern of Division of Labour....Pages 347-374 Front Matter....Pages 303-303 Mathematics and Mathematical Cultures in Fiction: The Case of Catherine Shaw....Pages 375-385 Morality and Mathematics....Pages 387-408 The Great Gibberish—Mathematics in Western Popular Culture....Pages 409-437 Is Mathematics an Issue of General Education?....Pages 439-460 This collection presents significant contributions from an international network project on mathematical cultures, including essays from leading scholars in the history and philosophy of mathematics and mathematics education. Mathematics has universal standards of validity. Nevertheless, there are local styles in mathematical research and teaching, and great variation in the place of mathematics in the larger cultures that mathematical practitioners belong to. The reflections on mathematical cultures collected in this book are of interest to mathematicians, philosophers, historians, sociologists, cognitive scientists and mathematics educators.--Résumé de l'éditeur Brendan Larvor, Editor. Includes Bibliographical References.