Semiotic fiddling while a digital Rome burns

Semiotic fiddling while a digital Rome burns

“So to summarise, according to the citation count, in order of descent, the authors are listening to themselves, dead philosophers, other specialists in semiotic work in mathematics education research, other mathematics education research researchers and then just occasionally to social scientists but almost never to other education researchers, including mathematics teacher education researchers, school teachers and teacher educators. The engagement with Peirce is being understood primarily through personal engagements with the original material rather than as a result of working through the filters of history, including those evidenced within mathematics education

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May 29th, 2011 | Category: Essays | Comments are closed

Are science and mathematics socially constructed?

Richard C. Brown, Are Science and Mathematics Socially Constructed?: A Mathematician Encounters Postmodern Interpretations of Science, World Scientific, 2009.

In this book, Brown recounts the rise of what is now known as the “postmodern interpretations of science” (PIS) or “sociology of scientific knowledge” (SSK) movement. In addition to pioneers Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn (the latter of whom Brown personally knew), the author describes the contributions of Berkeley philosopher Paul Feyerabend; Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch at Bath University; Steve Woolgar at Brunel; Michel Callon and Bruno Latour in Paris; a group of scholars at the University of Edinburgh; and

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May 29th, 2011 | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed

Borwein to participate in World Science Festival panel

Prof. Jonathan M. Borwein of the University of Newcastle in Australia (one of the present bloggers) will participate in a panel discussion at the World Science Festival, to be held on 3 Jun 2011 7:00pm in the Tishman Auditorium at the New School, 66 W 12th Street, New York City, USA. Other panelists are Keith Devlin (the “Math Guy” on National Public Radio and author of 30 books), Marcus du Sautoy (mathematician, author and BBC commentator) and Simon Singh (physicist, author and BBC TV producer). Tickets and other information are available at WSF website.

Here is a synopsis of the

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May 9th, 2011 | Category: News | Comments are closed

The Greatest Mathematical Discovery?

[Earlier version posted 6 Feb 2010]

Introduction

Question: What mathematical discovery more than 1500 years ago:

Is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, single discovery in the field of mathematics? Involved three subtle ideas that evaded the greatest minds of antiquity, even including geniuses such as Archimedes? Was fiercely resisted in Europe for hundreds of years after its discovery? Even today, in historical treatments of mathematics, is often dismissed with scant mention, or else is ascribed to the wrong source?

Answer: Our modern system of positional decimal arithmetic with zero, which was discovered in India in the fourth

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May 9th, 2011 | Category: Essays | Comments are closed