30.10.2009
Seventh Lecture: Prof. Luis Radford:
"Mathematics, knowing and being:
Is there a way out of the individualist self of modernity?"
Auditorium 001, Copenhagen Institute of Technology, Lautrupvang 2B, DK-2750 Ballerup.
Abstract:
The late Middle-Ages and early Renaissance witnessed the emergence of a new conception of the self. One distinctive trait of this new conception was an emphasis on self-making. Such an individualistic conception served to build the modern idea of what a person should be. Within the spectacular growth of Renaissance trade and commerce, mathematics lost (some of) the aristocratic ethical value with which Plato endowed it to become, in the hands of merchants and business men, a tool to pursue the quest of personal interests. But the sphere of actions and implications of mathematics was not limited to the construction of new identities. Mathematics also played a role in the formation of a new idea of nature.
With da Vinci and Galileo, nature was seen as something that could be scrutinized, understood, and transformed through mathematics. As a result, the individual's relationship to nature was conceived of in terms of production and material transformation. This understanding of nature has had, however, profound and unavoidable tensions manifested in the form of alienation, individualism, lack of social responsibility, etc. In this presentation I offer an overview of those problems and suggest some ways to try to rethink the general problematic of our relationship to others and the world from an educational perspective.
Luis Radford is full professor at Laurentian University, in Sudbury Ontario, Canada. He teaches at École des science de l'éducation, in the pre-service teachers' training program. He conducts classroom research with teachers from Kindergarten to Grade 12. His research interests include the relationship between culture and thought, the development of algebraic thinking, the epistemology of mathematics, and semiotics. In the past two years, he has been co-editor of two special issues of Educational Studies in Mathematics, one on the history of mathematics and mathematics education and the other on multimodality and gestures. Last year he co-edited the book Semiotics in mathematics education, published by Sense Publishers. He received the Laurentian University 2004-05 Research Excellence Award. Luis Radford is associate editor of Educational Studies in Mathematics and For the Learning of Mathematics and a member of the editorial board of many international journals, such as Mathematical Thinking and Learning, Recherches en Didactique des Mathématiques, and Revista Latinoamericana de Matemática Educativa.