Nate Schmolze
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze
>
-----Original Message-----
From: martin packer <packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu>
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, November 03, 1997 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: Tucson reports
>Jay writes from Tucson:
>
>>As to the critique of mathematics, certainly Valerie
>>Walkerdine, among others, has given us some directions to pursue, and I
>>have recently found an excellent critique of the philosophical idealism
>>still dominant in Mathematics in the work of Brian Rotman at LSU.
>
>I want to second Jay's recommendation of the work of Brian Rotman. Many
>months ago on xmca I briefly sketched Rotman's analysis of the ways the
>formal assertions of mathematics are sustained by the social practices of
>its practitioners. This in his 1993 book, "Ad infinitum: The ghost in
>Turing's machine - taking god out of mathematics and putting the body back
>in".
>
>And I recently stumbed across an older book: "Jean Piaget: Psychologist of
>the real." (1977, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.) There Rotman
>considers, with the care and subtlety of a trained mathematician, Piaget's
>epistemological claims. He shows, amongst other things, that the notion of
>equilibrium can't give direction to development (because there can be
>multiple equilibrium states for a system in change); that Piaget's
>understanding of evolution is based on a misplaced, pre-Darwinian emphasis
>on the individual, not the species; that his focus on the Bourbaki group's
>reconstruction of mathematics leads him to gravely missrepresent the
>history of mathematics (stopping with the Greeks, in some cases!); that the
>concept of internalization is vague; that his conceptualization of language
>is inadequate, and leads to further misunderstanding of mathematics; that
>Piaget fuzzes the relationship between individual and society in order to
>insist that cognitive change is not subject to social influences; and that
>his social organicism is nineteenth century in style.
>
>A good read! Two thumbs up!
>
>Martin
>
>
>================
>Martin Packer
>Associate Professor
>Department of Psychology
>Duquesne University
>Pittsburgh PA 15282
>
>(412) 396-4852
>fax: (412) 396-5197
>
>packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu
>http://www.duq.edu/liberalarts/psychology/packer.html
>
>