Knowing by Drawing: Mathematics as Gesture

Giovanni Maddalena ()
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Giovanni Maddalena: University of Molise

Chapter 42 in Handbook of Cognitive Mathematics, 2022, pp 1345-1364 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Mathematics has often been thought of and taught as a purely intellectual endeavor severed from our practices. After Gödel’s theorems, the field came to a radical rethinking of this intellectualist approach, above all in the French philosophy of mathematics. In recent decades, many authors have pointed out the diagrammatic nature of our doing of mathematics as a way to understand its synthetic ability to grasp reality. Using Charles S. Peirce’s phenomenology and semiotics, the chapter illuminates the necessity of thinking of mathematics as a determinate action that conveys a meaning. We use the term “gesture” to grasp this particular action, following the tradition of the French philosophy of mathematics. In the course of describing various kinds of complete and incomplete gestures, the chapter points out the characteristics of teaching a mathematics that is understood as the performance of a gesture.

Keywords: Diagram; Theory; Practice; Gesture; Semiotics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-03945-4_24

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