Mathematics as Metaphor

Mathematics as Metaphor

Author: I͡U. I. Manin

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0821843311

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Includes essays that are grouped in three parts: Mathematics; Mathematics and Physics; and, Language, Consciousness, and Book reviews. This book is suitable for those interested in the philosophy and history of mathematics, physics, and linguistics.


Mathematical Reasoning

Mathematical Reasoning

Author: Lyn D. English

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1136491147

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How we reason with mathematical ideas continues to be a fascinating and challenging topic of research--particularly with the rapid and diverse developments in the field of cognitive science that have taken place in recent years. Because it draws on multiple disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, and anthropology, cognitive science provides rich scope for addressing issues that are at the core of mathematical learning. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science, this book presents a broadened perspective on mathematics and mathematical reasoning. It represents a move away from the traditional notion of reasoning as "abstract" and "disembodied", to the contemporary view that it is "embodied" and "imaginative." From this perspective, mathematical reasoning involves reasoning with structures that emerge from our bodily experiences as we interact with the environment; these structures extend beyond finitary propositional representations. Mathematical reasoning is imaginative in the sense that it utilizes a number of powerful, illuminating devices that structure these concrete experiences and transform them into models for abstract thought. These "thinking tools"--analogy, metaphor, metonymy, and imagery--play an important role in mathematical reasoning, as the chapters in this book demonstrate, yet their potential for enhancing learning in the domain has received little recognition. This book is an attempt to fill this void. Drawing upon backgrounds in mathematics education, educational psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, the chapter authors provide a rich and comprehensive analysis of mathematical reasoning. New and exciting perspectives are presented on the nature of mathematics (e.g., "mind-based mathematics"), on the array of powerful cognitive tools for reasoning (e.g., "analogy and metaphor"), and on the different ways these tools can facilitate mathematical reasoning. Examples are drawn from the reasoning of the preschool child to that of the adult learner.


Selected Papers Of Yu I Manin

Selected Papers Of Yu I Manin

Author: Yu I Manin

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 1996-06-28

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 9814499552

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The book is a collection of research and review articles in several areas of modern mathematics and mathematical physics published in the span of three decades. The ICM Kyoto talk “Mathematics as Metaphor” summarises the author's view on mathematics as an outgrowth of natural language.


Speaking Mathematically

Speaking Mathematically

Author: David Pimm

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 9780415037082

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This stimulating study focuses on mathematics as a language with its own rules and conventions and explores the implications of this for classroom practice.


Love and Math

Love and Math

Author: Edward Frenkel

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0465069959

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An awesome, globe-spanning, and New York Times bestselling journey through the beauty and power of mathematics What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren't even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry. In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space. Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man's journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century's leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat's last theorem, that had seemed intractable before. At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.


The Square Root of God

The Square Root of God

Author: Timothy Carson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-12-05

Total Pages: 70

ISBN-13: 1498203701

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This provocative exploration of faith and numbers provides a whole new way to understand the mystery of God and the universe--a must-read for both spiritual individuals in search of relevancy and curious skeptics willing to entertain a new way to approach the most basic questions of life.


Naming Infinity

Naming Infinity

Author: Loren Graham

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-03-31

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0674032934

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In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.


Indra's Pearls

Indra's Pearls

Author: David Mumford

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-04-25

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 9780521352536

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Felix Klein, one of the great nineteenth-century geometers, rediscovered in mathematics an idea from Eastern philosophy: the heaven of Indra contained a net of pearls, each of which was reflected in its neighbour, so that the whole Universe was mirrored in each pearl. Klein studied infinitely repeated reflections and was led to forms with multiple co-existing symmetries. For a century these ideas barely existed outside the imagination of mathematicians. However in the 1980s the authors embarked on the first computer exploration of Klein's vision, and in doing so found many further extraordinary images. Join the authors on the path from basic mathematical ideas to the simple algorithms that create the delicate fractal filigrees, most of which have never appeared in print before. Beginners can follow the step-by-step instructions for writing programs that generate the images. Others can see how the images relate to ideas at the forefront of research.