Mathematics Education
Author(s): David Williamson Shaffer and James J. Kaput
Source: Educational Studies in Mathematics, Vol. 37, No. 2 (1998 - 1999), pp. 97-119
Published by: Springer
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ive advance, and that these changes in cognition led to changes in brain
developmentas well as new kindsof communicationandsocial interaction.
Thefirst stage Donald outlines is essentially that of primate(ape-like)
cognitionwith origins amongearly primatesmorethanthreemillion years
ago. This stage is based on 'episodic' thought,which Donald describesas
thinkingbasedon literalrecallof events.Apes can rememberdetailsof, for
example, a social interaction,and can even recall those details in context
- thus an ape might 'remember'that a largermale is dominantbecause
he can recall a fight where the dominantmale won. But, as Donald and
studiesof primatebehaviormakeclear,apes do not representeventsin any
way. They do not attachlabels to events, meaningsto events, or generalize
from events. They do not process events otherthanstoringtheirimages in
episodic memory.Donald arguesthatapes who have learnedrudimentary
sign languageare essentially storingand using the signs in much the same
way as they wouldprocessany kindof conditioning- they remembersigns
as responses leading in certain circumstancesto pleasure or away from
pain (p. 154).
Episodic cognition provided a basis for social interactionby giving
early hominids the ability to recall previous events and respond accord-
ingly. This rudimentarysocialization was extended by the development
of the fundamentalability to 'represent'events datingfrom homo erectus
about 1.5 million years ago. Donald describes this as 'mimesis,' or 'the
ability to produce conscious, self-initiated,representationalacts that are
intentionalbut not linguistic' (p. 168), comprisingthe second stage. For
example, following the gaze or pointing gesture of anotherrequiresan
understandingthat their gestures are referringto something of interest.
Or, more dramatically,reenactingor replayingevents using objects (like
a child who spanksa doll aftergetting a spankinghim or her self) shows a
basic ability to process events and to communicateabout them to oneself
and to others.
Donald arguesthat this ability to representevents was not (and is not)
dependenton language. The morphologicalchanges requiredfor the de-
velopment of speech are quite dramatic,and thereforeunlikely to occur
without some evolutionarypressurefavoringthe ability to communicate
using language. Donald believes that the evolution of language was de-
pendenton this priorcognitive development:namely,the developmentof
symbolic reference.Donald distinguishesiconic representation,wherethe
representationsharessome propertywith the thing being referredto, from
symbolic representation,where the symbol can be any arbitrarygesture,
sign, or sound.3 The first symbols were probably,accordingto Donald,
standardizedor ritualizedgestures.Fromsimplevocalizationto morecom-
There are four themes that emerge from this summaryof Donald's work.
The firstis that,at the evolutionarylevel, changesin cognitiondrivechang-
es in representationratherthan the other way around.At each stage in
development,a new way of thinking about (modeling) the experienced
world graduallycreatesnew means of instantiatingthatmodel. Language
evolves as a consequenceof symbolicthinking,not the otherway around;a
point of view consistentwith the deep analysesofferedby Deacon (1997).
The second idea that emerges from Donald's work (or, at least from
this overview of it), is that our current,'theoretic'culturedependson the
externalstorageof information.We use externalmediato recordideas and
to act as an externalmemory buffer while we are processing ideas. The
generation,translation,andtransformationof ideas aredone internally,but
depend on the presence of sharedexternal informationand the external
tools to augmentour workingmemories.6
A third idea from Donald's work is that this theoretic culture based
on external storage of informationarose, in large part, from the need to
deal with quantitativeinformation(Schmandt-Besserat,1978, 1992, 1994;
Donald, 1991). Whetherit was records of harvests,of business transac-
tions, or of the movementsof celestial bodies, the storageandcomputation
of numericalinformationwas a driving force in the developmentof our
currentculture.
A fourthand final point worthnoting here comes from Nelson's study
of Donald'stheoriesin the developmental(ratherthanevolutionary)realm.
This is the idea that new cognitive processes affect the way older modes
of thoughtemerge in individualdevelopment.The 'hybridmind' does not
Donald is quite explicit in his claim that the major cognitive develop-
ment involved in the creationof theoreticcultureis the appearanceof the
'externalmemoryfield' as a externalmemoryloop-thatis, as an externaliz-
ation of workingmemory(p. 329ff).8 Cognitivetheorists,and particularly
those whose informationprocessing perspectivematches Donald's ana-
lysis (see, e.g., Block, 1981; Akin, 1986; Rowe, 1987; Kosslyn & Koenig,
1992; Simon 1996), refer to short term or working memory as a kind of
scratchpad or datastoragebufferfor mentalprocessing.Workingmemory
holds pieces of informationfor processing,but is not necessarilythe part
of the mind thatdoes the actualtransformationof information.
Whetheror not one believes that mentalactivity can be as neatly seg-
mentedas such an informationprocessing perspectivesuggests (andwe do
not), it is clear thatDonald is arguingthattheoreticculturedependsnot on
externalprocessingof information,buton externaldevices to storeinform-
ation as a substitutefor long- and short-termmemory.That such storage
has cognitive consequences is clear. When a writermakes an outline for
a paper,it helps organize his or her thinking.But the transformationof
outline into text is still at every level a function of the workingof his or
her biological mind.
Or is it? Clearly, when a person is working with pen and paper,the
externaltools are recordingthe productsof his or her thinking.Thatthese
inertproducts(i.e., the outlineor emergingtext) feed back into thinkingis
obvious. But when a personwriteswith a wordprocessor,before finishing
a paper he or she can also run it througha spell-checkerand grammar-
checker.These programsalterthe text (or more accuratelyin most cases,
make suggestionsfor alteringthe text) based on rules of standardusage for
formal spelling and writing. The computerrunninga spell-checkeris not
just recordinga person's thinkingin a loop of productionand expression
of thought. It is actually performingsome of the functions that a mind
might take on in a similar circumstance- in this case, the functions of a
Donald's thesis suggests that we should look for the roots of the develop-
mentof a fifth stage of cognitionnot in the mediaof representationbut in a
changein the way we representor model our experienceof the world.That
is, we shouldunderstandthe culturaldevelopmentof computationalmedia
by looking at the cognitive processes that made possible their creation.
The developmentof computationalmedia depends on three factors: the
existence of discretenotations,the creationof rules of transformation,and
an externalsystem capableof autonomouslyapplyingthose rules.
Nelson Goodman (1968; see also Gardner,1982) argues that a prin-
cipal feature of any notation system is the extent to which the symbols
it uses are both disjointand well-defined,as opposed to syntacticallyand
semanticallydense. Put in less jargonyterms,symbol systems differin the
extent to which a given symbol can be precisely identifiedand precisely
interpreted.The canonical example is a spiked line, which might be the
trace of a function on a graphor a drawingof a line of hills. In one case,
the meaning of the markwould be unambiguousand its translationinto a
representationof numericalvalues clear. In the other,the line would hint
at spacespresentas well as spaces missing andhave shadesof meaningfor
the viewer.
Perhapsthe first, and certainlythe most well-explored,system of nota-
tion with precise symbols andunambiguousmeaningsis the representation
Figure 1. Illustrationfrom USA Todayof a graph that uses lines in both pictorial and
notational modes.
and Wilensky (1991) have addressedin other work and that we plan to
pursue in subsequentpapers. Briefly, as these authorsvariously suggest,
we may need to make room in our notion of mathematicalunderstand-
ing for a kind of 'concreteabstraction'that builds mathematicalmeaning
from an active web of meaningful associations ratherthan an relatively
meaninglessset of empty formalrules.
NOTES
15. A more precise definitioncan, of course, be offered relativeto a choice of logic (see,
for example, Roman, 1990), but this level of precision is beyond the scope of this
paper.
16. It is worth pointing out in this regardthat the externalrepresentationof algorithmic
processes (with or withoutformalsystems) is distinctlyandimportantlydifferentfrom
the externalexecutionof symbolic manipulation(which in the case of computational
media depends on the existence of formal systems). The cognitive advance we are
describinghere was not only in the externalstorage of algorithmsin formal systems
(which remove memory requirementson human cognition), but also in the external
operationof those algorithmsusing formal systems, which make it possible to offload
symbolicprocessing as well as symbolic storage.
17. In the mid 1970's the notion of a genetic algorithmwas inventedby John Holland
and others, wherein the programmodifies itself across iterationsby way of random
mutationsof its operationstrings.This form of externalsymbol processingamountsto
a new level of processing autonomy,differentin kind from self-modifying programs
as had been developed by John MacCarthyand others in the context of LISP during
the 1960's (see Holland, 1995).
18. This is, of course, the formal idea of a computerprogramas describedby Turingand
von Neumann(VonNeumann, 1966, Turing,1992).
19. It is worth rememberingthat operationson quantitieswere very muchtied to dimen-
sionality and otherphysicalreferentialconstraintstill Descartes'time (Kline, 1972).
20. In suggesting that mathematicshas played a significantrole in culturaland cognitive
evolution, we certainly do not mean to imply that mathematicswas the sole cause
of cultural or intellectual change. As is appreciatedby the readers of this journal,
mathematicsoperateswithin a culturalcontext, and is only one - perhapscurrently
under-appreciated - factorin culturaldevelopment.
21. It is worthnoting that the forms of knowledge developed in a computationalmedium
may be subtlydifferentfrom those developedin static, inertmedia (see Sherin, 1996),
just as the forms of knowledgedevelopedin mentalcalculationsmay be differentfrom
those developedusing pencil and paper.
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DAVIDWILLIAMSONSHAFFER
ProjectPACE,HarvardUniversity,
Cambridge,MA, U.S.A.
JAMESJ. KAPUT
MathematicsDepartment,
The Universityof Massachusetts,
Dartmouth,MA, U.S.A.
E-mail:jkaput@umassd.edu