Mathematics is a unique body of knowledge. The very entities that constitute what mathematics is are idealized mental abstractions that cannot be perceived directly through the senses. So, what kind of thing is mathematics? In academia, this question is usually studied in formal logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics. And, the whole enterprise has either a platonic flavor, in which mathematical entities are seen as timeless eternal facts existing outside of human beings, or a formalist one, where mathematics is reduced to the manipulation of meaningless symbols. In this talk Professor Núñez will address this question with a naturalistic approach that takes into account the biological and socio-cultural constrains under which the human mind unfolds. He will concentrate on the critical properties of number-to-space mappings—fundamental to modern mathematics—and more specifically, on the concept of the number line.
Professor Rafael Núñez is the director of the Embodied Cognition Laboratory at the Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego. He grew up in Chile, obtained his doctoral degree in Switzerland, and completed his post-doctoral work in Stanford and Berkeley, California. He investigates cognition—especially conceptual systems and imagination—from the perspective of the embodied mind. His multidisciplinary approach uses methods such as psycholinguistic experiments, gesture studies, brain imaging, and field research with isolated indigenous groups. His book Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being (with George Lakoff) presents a new theoretical framework for understanding the human nature of Mathematics and its foundations.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Benedikt Loewe