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Mathematics, Values and Equal Opportunities
1. Mathematics and Values
Absolutist philosophies are committed to a belief in the Absolute objectivity and neutrality of Mathematics, as are a range of personal philosophies of mathematics. However, despite this belief, the view of mathematics they promote is itself value-laden. For, as we have seen, within mathematics there are implicit values. Abstract is valued over concrete, formal objective over subjective, justification over discovery, rationality intuition, reason over emotion, general over particular, theory over practice, the work of the brain over the work of the hand, and so on. These constitute many of the over values of mathematics, as well as being shared by much of British and Western scientific culture.
Having identified these values, the question is, how can so overtly a value-laden view of mathematics claim that it is neutral and value-free? The answer of the absolutists is that these values concern mathematicians and their culture, and not the objective realm of mathematics itself. It is claimed that the content and methods of mathematics, by their very nature, make it abstract, general, formal, objective, rational, theoretical and concerned with justification. There is nature of theoretical scientific knowledge, including mathematics. There is nothing wrong with the concrete, informal, subjective, particular, or the context of discovery, according to this view. It is just that it is not mathematics (Popper, 1979).
What I wish to claim is that the values of the absolutists are smuggled into mathematics, either consciously or unconsciously, through the definition of the field. In other word, all that the absolutist perspectives will admit as bona fide mathematical knowledge must satisfy these values, and that anything that does not is rejected as inadmissible. Mathematical propositions and their proofs, the products of formal mathematical discourse, are admitted as legitimate mathematics. Mathematical invention, the practices of mathematicians and other products and processes of informal and professional mathematical discourse are not.
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