ICMI 08

Educ Stud Math (2011) 77:79104 DOI 10.
1007/s10649-011-9301-x
Conceptions for relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learningepistemology, history, and semiotics interacting
To the memory of Carl Menger (19021985)
Gert Schubring
Published online: 8 March 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract There is an over-arching consensus that the use of the history of mathematics should decidedly improve the quality of mathematics teaching. Mathematicians and mathematics educators show here a rare unanimity. One deplores, however, and in a likewise general manner, the scarcity of positive examples of such a use. This paper analyses whether there are shortcomings in theimplicit or explicitconceptual bases, which might cause the expectations not to be fulfilled. A largely common denominator of various approaches is some connection with the term genetic. The author discusses such conceptions from the point of view of a historian of mathematics who is keen to contribute to progress in mathematics education. For this aim, he explores methodological aspects of research into the history of mathematics, based onas one of the reviewers appreciatedhis life long research. Keywords Genetic principle . Epistemological obstacles . Students errors . Scientists errors . History as a tool . Biogenetic law . Semiotics and notations
1 Introduction The number of mathematicians who pleaded for a use of history of mathematics in its teaching is almost uncountable (see, e.g. Freudenthal, 1981). Over the past few decades, mathematicians have been increasingly joined by mathematics educators and by teachers. Thus, the integration of historical elements is a longstanding issue in mathematics education. The ICMI Study of 2000, History in Mathematics Education, represents its most systematically investigated state of the art (Fauvel & van Maanen, 2000). Further reflections were published in a special issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics (vol. 66, 2007).
This is the revised version of the invited plenary lecture at ICME 11, July 2008, Monterrey, Mexico. G. Schubring (*) Fakultt fr Mathematik, Universitt Bietefeld, Postfach 100 131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: gert.schubring@uni-bielefeld.de
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One characteristically finds more euphoric pleas for such a use than reflections about its realizability. A still not sufficiently known but seminal paper was published by Antonio Miguel in 1997 where besides the positive effects the problematic issues of the use of history in classrooms are clearly discussed (Miguel, 1997). He was followed by ManKeung Siu in 2004 with his 16 thought-provocative arguments for not using history in classrooms (Siu, 2006). It provoked some discussion (see Furinghetti, 2004, pp. 34) and was addressed in a presentation by David Pengelley at HPM Mexico in 2008focusing, however, on higher education. A systematic answer is still missing (Pengelley, 2008). The great majority of pleas for the use focus on motivational issues: One of the very well known ways [to introduce history] is to relate historical anecdotes to students. Another way is to see the history of mathematics as a huge arsenal of chronologically ordered problems to be imported into the classroom and to have students solve them. (Radford, 1997, p. 26) And Furinghetti reports as legitimation: it is the idea of history as a means to promote mathematics in the classroom in order to humanize mathematics (Furinghetti, 2004, p. 3). These ways of motivating and of humanizing are judged by Radford to remain at a superficial level (Radford, 1997, p. 26). He has pleaded therefore for a non-nave use of the history for educational purposes (p. 26). In fact, by looking at typical publications on the use of history, one is puzzled by their constant and general appeal to the history of mathematics, as a consistent whole, thus always with the specific article the, without ever discussing whether such an unquestioned general unit really exists. Rather, it is implicitly assumed that the history of mathematics constitutes a ready, stable, and finite corpus of knowledgelike a cupboard with a number of drawers filled with material, just waiting to serve and to be consumed. This is confirmed by the synthesis established by Furinghetti, evaluating a huge number of papers, conferences, and books over a long period; there, she resumes that three questions use to be addressed: For a teacher or a student: is it advisable to know the history of mathematics? If yes, how much history does one have to know? And how does one have to know history? (Furinghetti, 2004, p. 3). It is more a persons access to history that one studies than the kind of history, which should be learned and/or used. There are, however, a number of approaches regarding the use of history, which go beyond the motivational goal and the superficial view; these approaches have as their focus the nature of mathematics and investigate whether, by taking into account this nature, the teachinglearning processes might be improved. A common pattern of these approaches can be called a genetic one, that is, to establish a relation between the historical evolution of mathematics and the learning of mathematics. We shall investigate here prominent representatives of such genetic conceptions and consider how far they are realizing the claims made by them. Clearly, any view of the nature of mathematics implies a specific epistemological stance. And in order to make the approaches productive, these views should not only be made explicit, but also be reflected within the frames of theoretical discussions in historiography and sociology of science as well as in mathematics education. Not only is any position in mathematics education is based on a specific philosophy of mathematics, according to the famous dictum by Ren Thom at ICME II in Exeter 1972, but also any conception of history of mathematics resides in a particular epistemology. Radford spoke therefore of an epistemological laboratory, when one tries to understand the views on the development of mathematical knowledge as underlying historiographical approaches (Radford, 1997, p. 26).
Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning
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2 Genetic (I) Actually, genetic approaches were proposed or practiced long before the end of the nineteenth century where their origins are usually supposed. The origins coincide, in fact, with the emergence of modern science by the end of the sixteenth century and refer to the new philosophy of science as elaborated by Francis Bacon (15611626). What is revealing is the enormous spectrum of approaches understood as being genetic. There is an astonishing variation, ranging from deductive ways of presenting knowledge to inductive ways.1 Better known and time and again rediscovered as a first and allegedly truly genetic method is the approach described and practiced by Alexis-Claude Clairauts (17131765) textbook Elmens de Gomtrie (Clairaut 1741). Clairaut, an important French mathematician and physicist, wrote moreover a second textbook: Elmens dAlgbre (Clairaut, 1746), which followed the same method, he claimed. Both books have often been claimed to be realizations of a genetic principle. This characterization is misleading; however: it is better to attribute them to a problem-oriented or heuristic approach.2 The geometry textbook intends to develop geometry step by step, always motivated by practical questions like measuring quantities in fields, in the landscape, in farming, and generally, in land surveying. At first glance, the geometry textbook realizes Felix Kleins demands to develop the geometrical notionsbeginning from natural, primitive questions (see below). A closer analysis shows, however, that Clairaut did not succeed in a natural evolution of the conceptual field, according to an unfolding of original problems and of their consequences. Rather, he imposed what should be the next, seemingly practical question to be solved. Moreover, Clairauts approach did not realize the claim to lead from simple notions to abstract knowledge. Rather, he refrained from all abstraction and theorization. And his claim to follow the historical evolution of geometry was not realized either: Clairaut postulates, in fact, how it might have been, how the inventors did proceedhis historical-genetic claim can hence at best be appreciated as a rational reconstructionin the sense of Lakatos. Glaeser has called it pedagogy-fiction (Glaeser, 1983, p. 341). The lack of abstraction was consciously intended: The book was produced for a mundane public, not for use in schools and systematic teaching. Actually, it was written for a marquise who desired to be instructed in some leisure mathematics. This explains Clairauts main methodological concern: ne pas rebuter les commenantsnot to scare off the beginners. For the algebra textbook, the problem-oriented approach was even more difficult to realize. In the famous Encyclopdie by Diderot and dAlembert, in the key entry about textbooks, Clairauts textbooks were sharply criticized for omitting essential proofs and hence for lack of rigour. Moreover, they were criticized for providing nothing but a sample of propositions instead of a methodically constructed architecture (dAlembert, 1755, col. 497 r).
For a closer analysis of the genetic methods since early modern times, the reader is referred to my book of 1978; written in German, it has been brought again to the attention of an international public by Furinghetti and Radford (2002) and by Mosvold (2003). 2 For a closer discussion of Clairauts approach and of its alleged genetic character see also Schubring (1983a), Glaeser (1983), and Schubring (2003, pp. 5458). The formulation Clairaut contributed greatly to the introduction of the genetic method (in: Furinghetti & Radford, 2008, p. 636) seems to express the contrary of what the authors wanted to say, since they agree in a subsequent quotation with Glaesers critique that Clairaut ignores the historical development of mathematics.
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3 Genetic (II): Felix Klein It was Felix Klein, an outstanding mathematician, who did the utmost for a productive relation between mathematics and mathematics education and who decisively promoted the genetic principle, at the turn from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Klein was deeply convinced of the pedagogical superiority of the genetic principleyet he never gave concrete suggestions for practicing it. Nevertheless, from his assertions, one can deduce some of the intended characteristic features. Firstly, he expressed, in 1907, the conviction that this didactical principle had won the dominance within mathematics education: While a systematic manner of exposing mathematics instruction dominated earlier on, which overemphasized the formal aspects of knowledge, this did change more and more over the last years. Today, in German schools, this methodology is overcome. You can remark this victory of the genetic methodology, in the most impressive way, by the establishment of the already mentioned propedeutic geometry teaching. (Klein, 1907, p. 24; my translation) A first concrete hint is, hence, that Klein understood a genetic ordering of the teaching subjects as opposed to the traditional systematic teaching. A next hint is that he recommended the so-called biogenetic law as the basis for establishing a good syllabus: This basic law should apply to mathematics instruction, too, like any instruction, at least in general: teaching should, by tieing to the natural disposition of the youth, lead them slowly to higher things and eventually even to abstract formulations, by following that same path on which the entire mankind struggled to climb from its nave primitive state upwards to more developed insight. . A decisive obstacle for a dissemination of such a natural and truly scientific teaching methodology seems to be the lack of historical knowledge, which becomes so often evident. (Klein, 1911, pp. 590591; my translation) Klein mentioned here a factual restriction regarding a general application of this teaching method, which he had characterized as being simultaneously natural and truly scientific: the lack of sufficient historical knowledge: apparently he meant the teachers of mathematics. Another hint of how Klein conceived of the genetic curriculum is that he postulated that mathematics instruction should begin with the continuous, that is with geometry, like mathematics itself, as he claimed, and only after that proceed to the discontinuous, that is to the number concept and to algebra (Klein, 1899, p. 136). Clearly, Klein understood historical development as a cumulative and continuous process.
4 Genetic (III): the biogenetic principle 4.1 First appearances Since the biogenetic law featured as prominently in Kleins views on mathematics teaching, I am discussing it and its strange reappraisal in recent times here, in its own section. The recapitulation hypothesis originated from a transfer of biologism to cognitive development. It was in particular Haeckels famous law for biological development of the species which was grafted onto psychology. The graft from biology onto psychology and education was effected, among others, by the philosopher Herbert Spencer: the education
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of the child must accord, both in mode and arrangement, with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race (quoted from Branford, 1908, p. 326). This grafted biogenetical principle, or principle of parallelism, had become a largely shared topic in education by the end of the 19th and the early 20th centuries and, remarkably enough, in particular in mathematics education. In fact, it would seem that mathematics was, and still is, the only school discipline where this principle has become so prominent. I cannot remember anybody to have claimed it being applicable, say, to physics or to chemistry. Since John Fauvel reproduced a figure from his book as evidence for the parallelism approach (Fauvel, 1999, p. 29), Benchara Branford is attributed, even in recent times, to have been the classical advocate and propagator of that parallelism for purposes of mathematics education, due to his 1908 book: A Study of Mathematical Education including The Teaching of Arithmetic. Actually, the only evidence for the claim is the mentioned figure; those who still consider the book to be an exposition of the biogenetic law, have either not opened the book or stopped after the opening figure. Essentially, Branford was neither a staunch supporter of parallelism nor a theoretician of mathematics education, but rather expressed himself quite cautiously with regard to the socalled law. The merit of Branfords book thus lies in his reflections and differentiations concerning the notion of the biogenetic law. He was the first to call for specifically didactical research in order to concretize that principle. And he also seems to have been the first to practice a broad notion of didactical research: it was to contain research into the history of mathematics, into the philosophy of mathematics, and in particular into psychology. For Branford, the evaluation of teachers experience was crucial for didactical research. It thus becomes evident that Branford is the pioneer of modern research into mathematics education, a research based on empirical study, and no longer confined to deriving recipes from normative prescriptions (see Schubring, 2006).3 The prominence of the biogenetic lawor, as Radford likes to call it: the recapitulation (see Radford & Puig, 2007)was brief: it disappeared entirely from the didactical debates and agendas. This might be due to the period after World War I, where one was more concerned with problems of actuality than with historical ones. 4.2 The resurrection Strangely enough, although seemingly forgotten, it made a more or less explicit return to mathematics education in the second half of the twentieth century, and in particular in approaches for using mathematics history in teaching (see Schubring, 2006). The first time that the biogenetic law became prominent again, in the 1960s, in almost the same wording as used by Felix Klein, was in a reaction against the so-called modern mathematics, against a one-sided orientation of school mathematics on the structure of mathematical science. It was in the famous memorandum of 65 mathematicians from Canada and the USAamong them Birkhoff, Courant, Kline, Polya, Andr Weil, and Wittenberg, published in 1962, which argued for the genetic principle: in order to explain an idea (one should) refer to its genesis and retrace the historical formation of the idea. This may suggest a general principle: The best
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A detailed analysis of Branfords didactical conceptions is already given in my book of 1978 (chap. III.2).
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way to guide the mental development of the individual is to let him retrace the mental development of the raceretrace its great lines, of course, and not the thousand errors of detail. (Memorandum, 1962) 4.3 Misunderstandings of Piaget It took more than 20 years for the biogenetic law to reenter, in a frequent manner, the discourse in mathematics education: firstly, by more or less nave practitioners of the use of history in teaching, and secondly, by a misunderstood application of Piaget. It is most revealing how this happened. Piagets novel approach is well-known for studying the psychogenesis, admittedly focused on the individual. Only in 1983, that is at a relatively late point of his ideas, did Piaget publish a work where he applied his own psychogenetic approach to studying the relation between history of science and psychogenesis. The historical studies in this work had not been undertaken by Piaget himself, but rather by his collaborator Rolando Garcia. And Garcia did not engage in historical research proper, but rather relied on existing historiographical publications with the intention of reassessing them from the Piagetian position of genetic epistemology. This position does not consider history as a memory of science, as Kuhn does, but rather as an epistemological laboratory (Piaget & Garcia, 1989, p. 259). The authors very approach already suggests a certain parallelism between ontogeny and psychogenesis, but in a modified manner. Actually, they claim the existence of an isomorphism between the subjects and the sciences development, at least for low level structures: the fact of fundamental importance for epistemology is that the subject, beginning with very low level prelogical structures, comes to develop rational norms that are isomorphic with those of the early days of science (1989, p. 5). Their conception of a basically epistemic nature of the process of change leads them to their main hypothesis according to which the two types of analysis, or of research, will necessarily converge. New in this parallelist conception is its sophistication; there is no longer a claim to an identifiability by specific elements of knowledgea claim raised customarily, and again by Brousseau (Brousseau, 1997, p. 85), but instead reliance, in line with Piagets general theory of genetic epistemology, on mechanisms and instruments of cognitive procedures: The main reason why there is a kinship between historico-critical and genetic epistemology is that the two kinds of analyses, irrespective of the important differences between them in the data used, will always, and at all levels, converge toward similar problems as to mechanisms and instruments. (Piaget & Garcia, 1989, p. 8) In general, what Piaget and Garcia present is not a convergence of contents, but one of cognitive mechanisms, and the books purpose is to discuss and to present these mechanismswhich are all concerned with the nature of reasoning: This goal is not to set up correspondences between historical and psychogenetic sequences in terms of content, but rather to show that the mechanisms mediating transitions from one historical period to the next are analogous to those mediating the transitions from one psychogenetic stage to the next. (1989, p. 28) A paper by Anna Sfard of 1995 is often cited as an application of Piaget and Garcias work to mathematics education (Sfard 1995). Strangely enough, it is not so much an
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application of Piaget and Garcia, since it only marginally uses the mechanismsanalysis, but rather takes up earlier claims about recapitulation of knowledge attributed to Branford. Essentially, it meant the reintroduction of a crude recapitulation; despite an early critique by Radford (Radford, 1997, p. 28), its claims became quite widely disseminated. Actually, one finds the parallelism claim in her paper in the form which now almost always recurs where the use of history in teaching mathematics is addressed. She claims that similar recurrent phenomena can be traced throughout its [that is knowledges] historical development and its individual reconstruction. And that difficulties experienced by an individual learner at different stages of knowledge formation may be quite close to those that once challenged generations of mathematicians (Sfard, 1995, pp. 1516). The transition from one level to the next one is exemplified in the paper by the development of algebra and understood as proceeding from empirical to abstract notions. Her evaluation of historiographical literature is weak.4 Sfard is convinced that obstacles effective in history must appear in the classroom as wellthus, relating recapitulation to the conception of epistemological obstacles (see below): A natural resistance to upheavals in tacit epistemological and ontological assumptions, which so often obstructed the historical growth of mathematics, can hardly be prevented from appearing in the classroom (Sfard, 1995, p. 17). She understands the history of mathematics as a ready-made, unquestionable product suited to confirm her claims: history will be used here only to the extent which is necessary to substantiate the claims about historical and psychological parallels (Sfard, 1995, p. 17). Her entire approach shows a strong continuism; she confirms her intention to find developmental invariants as observed in the historical development of mathematics as well as in the process of individual learning (Sfard, 1995, p. 22). In an even more radical emphasis of a direct use of history for teaching, she voices her assent to a study by Harper of 1987, quoting it as one of the few studies that makes explicit use of history to predict students behavior (Sfard, 1995, p. 26; my italics). As a matter of fact, Harper consciously addresses parallelism as a conjecture. Assessing his research, he says that there appears to [be] a parallel (Harper, 1987, p. 85). There is no mention of a predictability. Yet, Sfards notion has been taken up in chapter 5.2. of the ICMI Study: The role of historical analysis in predicting and interpreting students difficulties in mathematics (Fauvel & Maanen, 2000, pp. 149152). 4.4 Is there empirical evidence? Recently, despite the frequent criticism of the soundness of recapitulation, a paper was published claiming to give empirical evidence of the validity of the biogenetic law (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007). As a result, two aspects are highlighted: a positive one and a negative one regarding the validity of the law. Although this paper is often quoted in mathematics education, it unfortunately presents a characteristic example of how history is handled by mathematic educators. The mathematical concept, which the authors choose to be correlated in its historical evolution and in its learning in schools, is the order relation on the number line. Actually, the authors do not define what they understand by number line. While that clearly emerged as a didactical notion and rather recently, correlating geometrical and arithmetical aspects relevant for school mathematics, it never occurred in the history of mathematics as a problem or a proper notion. The authors operationalize it as a merely arithmetical notion, mixing elements of the history of negative numbers, of absolute values, of algebraic inequalities, etc., and these largely by historical mathema4
Besides papers in journals, she barely uses specialized studies on the history of algebra.
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ticians, who did not at all intend to discuss the alleged concept of number line. Thus, the authors do not only artificially construct a historical object, but the cases presented from history for these elements miss also internal coherence and unfortunately show, moreover, methodological simplicity. Michael Stifel is anachronistically attributed to have dealt in 1544 with constituting the theoretical basis of logarithms; first uses of negative numbers are interpreted as a necessity to introduce this concept (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, pp. 168169). Authors like Descartes, Newton, Euler, and Bolzano who had clearly in mind absolute values when they compared positive and negative values, are judged to miss the framework of the unified number line (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, pp. 168169). Actually, the quotation given from Eulers Algebra clearly shows his understanding of a continuous ordering of the integers (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, p. 168); moreover, Euler also several times used even an explicit connected lineage, like , -5, -4, -3-, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, . (Euler, 2000, p. 32) The solution of the historical problem is credited to Cauchy, in 1821, who is attributed a decisive impact for the ordering of positive and negative numbers (2007, p. 169), without being aware that for Cauchy negative numbers did not exist (as shown by several recent publications; see Spalt, 1996, pp. 3746) and that therefore the intended number line was no concept at all for him. The quote given for Cauchy in fact just refers to quantities (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, p. 169). The presentation of conceptual problemslike Carnot rejecting in 1803 the new order relation (2007, p. 170)abruptly ends, after the solution attributed to Cauchy, with the affirmation: These arguments. were finally overcome (2007, p. 170). Not even the longstanding difficulty is mentioned: to understand that multiplying an inequality by a negative number entails that the direction of the inequality sign changes (see Schubring, 19841985, p. 22). The key methodological ingenuousness consists in ascribing to former creative mathematicians the lack of the appropriate conceptual framework (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, p. 167 and p. 179). Actually, mathematicians like Carnot were not lacking the conceptual framework: they applied conceptions divergent from the modern ones (see Schubring, 1986). In fact, present-day historiography of mathematics no longer understands historical development as a teleological process leading to our modern views, but searches for differing conceptions underlying earlier notions not identifiable with later ones (see Hyrup, 2004). Denouncing the view of Whig history, Netz has paraphrased this nicely: its not that they couldnt (Netz, 2002). Given the misinterpretations and misunderstandings of historical developments, the experiments based on them and performed with secondary school students can, alas, not give valid and significant results. Moreover, the three questions with which the students were confronted were restricted to handling arithmetic inequalities (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, p. 171). An instructive and concise introduction to the entire problematic of parallelism and of the biogenetic law is the excellent paper by Furinghetti and Radford (2002). They elaborate not only Piaget and Garcias deficits in conceiving of cultural and social impacts on cognitive formation, but they also present L. Vygotskys alternative approach as that of one of the few psychologists to have profoundly investigated socio-cultural influences on cognitive processes. As they put it, the merging of the natural and the socio-cultural lines of development in the intellectual development of the child definitely precludes any recapitulation (Furinghetti & Radford, 2002, p. 637; see Furinghetti & Radford, 2008).
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5 Genetic (IV): Otto Toeplitz A much more mathematically elaborated and theoretically reflected conception than those presented so far has been established by Otto Toeplitz (18811940)a German mathematician whose main book is translated at least into English and who was quite active in improving the teaching of mathematics in schools and in universities between the two World Wars. Toeplitz pleaded for using history as a pivotal didactical meanshe called this the genetic methodology and introduced the distinction between a direct genetic methodology and an indirect genetic one. In a key paper of 1926, Toeplitz proposed to return to the roots of the concepts and to present them thus as living beings. As Toeplitz said, one could pursue two different ways to realize this goal in the teaching practice: One can either present the discoveries to the students with all its dramatic circumstances and let thus grow for them the questions, concepts and factsI would call this the direct genetic methodologyor one can learn oneself from such an historical analysis what is the real meaning, the true essence of each concept, and one can draw conclusions from such an analysis for the teaching of this concept which are no longer tied to the historical developmentI am calling this second approach the indirect genetic methodology. (Toeplitz, 1927, pp. 9293) While the direct genetic methodology corresponds to the already discussed direct use of history in teaching, the second, indirect approach is interesting since it takes into consideration the role of the teacher and understands the teacher as actively reflecting the historical processes and as transmitting their essence by his or her teaching. Toeplitzs indirect approach looks not so much on knowledge, but on meta-knowledge, and his main focus is on how to provide future teachers in their training with such a meta-knowledge about mathematics. Toeplitz has used this methodology in his own courses at the university, in particular on the infinitesimal calculus. This course has been published as a book: The development of the infinitesimal calculus, exposed according to the genetic methodology (Toeplitz, 1949 [1963]). Unfortunately, despite its promising approach, this book cannot really serve as a model for the proposed methodological use of history, since Toeplitzs program to reveal the decisive turning points and ruptures in the historical processes is hardly realized: Toeplitz discerned mainly three fundamental concepts, which determined, by their development, the emergence of the infinitesimal calculus. For two of them, the infinite process and the number concept, Toeplitz tries to show that the ancient Greeks already achieved all the essential steps and that later developments were but an unfolding and a change of exterior form of these first achievements. For instance, in the famous dispute between Dedekind and Lipschitz, concerning whether Dedekinds concept of real numbers was new or identical with the notions of the Greek Eudoxos, Toeplitz took the part of Lipschitz in claiming that Eudoxos already operated with the concept of real numbers while Dedekind had insisted that the notion of completeness was missing entirely in Greek mathematics and could not be derived, not even implicitly from geometrical ideas (see Dugac, 1976). Toeplitz admitted for the function concept only that it emerged as a new concept in modern times, but even here he tried to show that Ptolemy was already aware in Hellenist times of this concept.5
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For a detailed analysis of this revealing textbook, see my study (Schubring, 1978, chapter III.1).
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We can see therefore that Toeplitz remained attached to the traditional view of a continuous, cumulative development in the history of mathematics so that his own notion of an indirect approach could not become fruitful. His view can be seen as a teleological onebut not determined by its end and rather by its beginning, which he understood as a germ which contains already all further development, in an unfolded mannerin conformity with the values of classical antiquity upheld by the leading social classes until his times. His underlying conception seems, too, to be affected by that notion, which is commonly called the biogenetic law; Toeplitz claimed that the development of mathematical concepts uses in general to follow the easy ascent from the more simple to the more complex and that this historical ascent might be used didactically (Toeplitz, 1927, p. 95). The example of Toeplitzs conception therefore again shows that the main problem for a revealing use of history resides in an adequate conception of historical development. While most of the other scientific disciplines weresince Thomas Kuhns famous book on scientific revolutionsdiscussing revolutions in their field and ruptures in the conceptual development, mathematics seemed to close its mind for a long time to become aware of an analogous epistemological change. The traditional epistemology stressing the uniform, continuous, and cumulative character of this queen of the sciences was, apparently, too strong.6
6 Alternate conceptual bases for history of mathematics: the relation between research and teaching The genetic conceptions presented so far do not fulfil the expectations to enhance teaching and learning thanks to a better representation of the nature of mathematical concepts. While the first conceptions were not proposed by experts in the history of mathematics, Toeplitz was very well versed in history, but his alignment to classical education and Bildung impeded him from going beyond the traditional cumulative view. We are therefore led to deepen the analysis and to search for alternate understandings of the historical processes occurring in mathematics. Such a search will imply an explicit reflection of the epistemological bases. In fact, there are new approaches in the historiography of mathematics developed since several decades and using in particular approaches from systems theory in sociology. Thus, one can study the interrelationship between the system of production of new mathematical knowledge and the systems encompassing and supporting mathematics. It is particularly productive to focus on one specifically related social sub-system (see Luhmann, 1990), the education system, since the dissemination of mathematical knowledge is essentially bound to the education system and since teaching positions were for a long period the only relevant professional careers for mathematicians. The analysis of the relationship between mathematics seen as a social system and its surrounding systems has progressed well beyond the fruitless dichotomy of internal versus external determination of mathematical ideas and has particularly contributed to better understanding the circumstances of mathematical production.
The first exception, which undertook to implement Kuhns ideas to mathematics, is the collection of essays, edited by Donald Gillies, at a relatively late stage as compared to other disciplines (Gillies, 1992).
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A primordial element in these analyses is given by a re-evaluation of the relation between teaching and research.7 The traditional view of this relation has been that the scientific part exclusively plays the active, productive role and that the didactical side always is the passively receiving partner, which transposes the received into the instruction system (a view, still perpetuated by Chevallards concept of transposition didactique; see Chevallard, 1985). The relation between scientific knowledge and school knowledge was therefore understood as operating only in one direction. This one-directional view was denounced in 1978 by Willem Kuykthe author of Complementarity in mathematics (1977)who compared it with the relation between stalactites and stalagmites: Mathematics is not a stalactite hanging over a stalagmite (Kuyk, 1978, p. 5); Kuyk thus denied the view that mathematics education grows only by receiving some drops from above, from the supreme instance. The instructional system cannot be understood in the simplistic way of a stalagmite, which receives some drops from the stalactite while it is growing. My intention is to show that the re-evaluation of the relation between research and teaching enables us to arrive at another understanding of historical development. An important publication on this way has been the article by Judith Grabiner of 1974: Is mathematical truth time dependent? A particularly illuminating quotation by Destutt de Tracy, a French philosopher, of 1801, underlines the productive role of teaching for research, for obtaining new knowledge, which I am emphasizing in my approach to the use of history of mathematics. This quotation presents an evaluation of the historically first experience to disseminate scientific knowledge, to elementarize science and make it accessible to the general public. Reflecting the ambitious projects of the French Revolution to produce such truly elementary textbooks, Destutt de Tracy (1801) resumed: When one is about to expose a scientific fact, one often notes that it necessitates to undertake before new observations, andbetter investigatedit presents itself by a quite different point of view. On other occasions, it proves that it is the principles of science itself, which need to be revised, or one has to fill numerous gaps to connect them mutually. Briefly, the matter is not to disseminate the truth, rather one has to detect it.8 My own research on the development of mathematics in the nineteenth century in Prussia (a leading state in Northern Germany), done in the early 1980s, has shown that the profession of mathematics teachers at secondary schools constituted the social basis which enabled the establishment of mathematics as an autonomous discipline within the university system. Moreover, the type of interest of these teachers in mathematics decisively moulded the production of pure mathematics for which Prussian and later German mathematics has become so well-known: Actually, the interest of these teachersthemselves regarded as scholars, itself a characteristic outcome of the Prussian neohumanist educational policy in rigour and in a consistent architecture of mathematics, yielded important achievements in foundational questions and in clarifying basic notions (see Schubring, 1983b, pp. 158167). While such constructive contributions of secondary school teachers are characteristic for social settings where teachers work is culturally valued, a decisive impact on achieving more rigour by the needs of teaching can be generally asserted.
See my debate with Bruno Belhoste on the role of teaching and education for production (Belhoste, 1998; Schubring, 2001). 8 In vol. 1, p. 4 f., of his Projet dlments dIdologie (my translation, G.S.); accessible at the site: http:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k41799v.image.f9.
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Based on these briefly outlined research studies and results on the history of mathematics in its context, I am proposing as consequences the following: firstly, that the teaching of mathematics has influenced the development of mathematical research. The dimension of instruction and teaching has therefore to be considered for an adequate notion of historical understanding of mathematics (see Schubring, 2001); secondly, that ruptures and the emergence of novel directions in history of mathematics are largely due to epistemological changes, which are connected to changes in the systems related to the system of scientific activities; and thirdly, that didactical research on learning processes can reveal means and categories which are additionally applicable for analyzing processes of scientific development.
The last two propositions aim at including the subjectivity of the student and of the scientist within the theoretical framework. In order to explain and to apply these propositions, I want to discuss two aspects on which much didactical research has been done over the last decades in order to study the subjective element in the learning process. These two aspects are the errors and the obstacles.
7 Errors in learning The investigation of students errors in the learning process has constituted a major field of didactical research for the past decades and has actually been one of the main features of the emergence of mathematics education as a scientific discipline. Didactics of mathematics has increasingly established more refined experimental instruments to analyse pupils errors and discussed theoretical models for interpreting errors. As major results of these research studies, I need here to mention only briefly: errors are not merely expressions of an individuals defects, of missing attention, or the consequence of missing knowledge or due to an accidental specific situation. Errors can therefore not be simply remedied by increasing discipline, attention, and diligence of the pupils. Further research has increasingly questioned that these specific patterns are signs for merely individual difficulties. 7.1 Epistemological obstacles We can deepen the discussion of errors, here in the interest of using the history for teaching by the means of didactical categories, if we regard the specific contributions by French didacticians. The emphasis on the knowledge itself, what one can call the epistemic dimension, which is largely missing in German and North-American didactical research on errors, constituted in French research one of the main issues. One uses in France a category for didactics of mathematics, which was originally established for studies in the history of science. I mean the category of obstacles pistmologiques, of epistemological obstacles, put forward in 1936 by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. It gained particular influence within mathematics education after a new edition of his works in 1975 (Bachelard, 1975). Bachelards conceptions have been transposed since a first publication of 1976, to didactics of mathematics, by Guy Brousseau, who has developed a didactical theory of obstacles. Its
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main aim is to overcome the attribution of errors only to subjective causes in the students. Brousseau discerns in particular the following types: didactical or didacto-genetic obstacles: by this he means learning difficulties or barriers which originate from the conception or structure of the curriculum, from the particular teaching concept, from didactical concepts, and, secondly, epistemological obstacles. According to Brousseau, these obstacles to learning are rooted in the nature of mathematical knowledge and can therefore not be avoided. They are constitutive for the respective knowledge, they become visible at some stage of the historical development and they can be identified by historical analysis. He emphasizes that obstacles are unavoidable, but also that one should not reinforce them explicitly: Obstacles of really epistemological origin are those from which one neither can nor should escape, because of their formative role in the knowledge being sought. (Brousseau, 1997, p. 87) According to Brousseaus, theory there are inherent contradictions within the types of knowledge tied to the lower stages: the knowledge shows itself to be effective as long as it is applied within these restricted areas, but is revealed to be an obstacle when it is applied to situations of a higher stage. Some knowledge can therefore, due to inherent reasons, function as an obstacle against progress on the next stage (Brousseau, 1997, p. 84). One can therefore understand his theory as a transposition of Bachelardian ideas to didactics. Both theories on which Brousseau relies, by Bachelard and by Piaget, imply a teleological vision: the certainty to be able to achieve the most mature, the most elevated level of science, of human thinking. Due to this developmental perspective, Bachelards conception is applicable to mathematicsalthough he affirms the contrary (see below).9 7.2 The function of history in this French conception In his revised version of his conception, of 1983,10 Brousseau (1997) relied more on history of mathematics and attributed to it a decisive function: But it can prove itself to be fruitful for teaching insofar as: the obstacles in question are truly identified in the history of mathematics; they have been traced in students spontaneous models; the pedagogical conditions of their defeat or their rejection are studied with precision in such a way that a precise didactical project can be proposed to teachers, the assessment of such a project can be considered positive (Brousseau, 1997, p. 9394).
This strengthened function of history reveals, however, a weakness of the conception: history has to serve as a source for errors committed by mathematicians. Thus, history has no productive function; it serves as an element of a recipe for research: From the outset, therefore, researchers should
Strangely enough, neither Brousseau nor other adherents of the obstacles approach commented or reflected on the contradiction to use Bachelards conception despite his explicit exclusion of mathematics. 10 His first version, of 1976, was an immediate reception of the reissue of Bachelards book. Both versions, of 1976 and of 1983, are accessible in English translation (Brousseau, 1997).
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a) find recurrent errors, and show that they are grouped around conceptions; b) find obstacles in the history of mathematics; c) compare historical obstacles with obstacles to learning and establish their epistemological character (Brousseau, 1997, p. 99). Here, one finds no active role for history. This seems to be related to the fact that Brousseau did not integrate a key element of Bachelards conception: the notion of a rupture between empirical knowledge and scientific knowledge, which is of enormous importance expressly for didactical research. Furthermore, in the 1983 conception, the supposed symmetry between the side of history and the side of the learner is lacking: Since obstacles were declared to be insurmountableincontournables and insurmontables (Brousseau, 1989, quoted in Brousseau, 1998, p. 154)while students errors should be surmountable, there is a drastic asymmetry. And scientific progress would be impossible when obstacles could not be overcome. Glaesers understanding of obstacles as difficulties, hence without a normative character (Glaeser, 1984), lent itself better to historical investigations. The conception of epistemological obstacle was criticised by me as early as 1986 regarding the historical legitimacy of alleged obstacles, from the point of experience of my research on the history of negative numbers(Schubring, 1986) and by Radford (1997), in particular, by its affinity to the recapitulationist program. An international meeting in 1988 tried to improve the understanding of the conception and to relate it to socio-cognitive conflicts. Key questions like: how to identify the obstacles?, can one avoid them?, should one avoid them?, and how can an obstacle can be surpassed? remained still essentially open (Bednarz & Garnier, 1989, p. 19). 7.3 Looking at empirical studies A number of studies have been carried out on the basis of this research program, for instance on the difficulties of students with the limit concept in calculus, with the notion of infinite, and on students notions of basic geometric concepts. A particularly profound study of the limit concept, both for the historical and for the didactical side is the collective work published in 2005 by the group zeroallozero of Italian researchers: Oltre ogni limite Beyond any limit. It is not bound to the conception of obstacles; rather, it presents teaching proposals for laying sound ground for these concepts from early schoolingto avoid what otherwise used to be thought of as unavoidable. Actually, it has never been questioned whether the historical presentations of the concepts in question and the experimental design of the respective studies are sound and reliable. The results of such an analysis are disillusioning.11 If one excepts Duroux (1983), which is a good yet incomplete historical study of the absolute value and one without ambition to study students errors, and the mentioned Italian book, the studies reveal a highly restrictive selection of the conceptual development and an experimental design not corresponding to the usual standards.12 I will relate here three often-quoted publications: Cornu (1983) and two publications by Sierpinska, of 1985 and 1994.
11
12
Urged by the reviewers, I am passing here from my former general assessment to a more detailed analysis. This seems to apply to more of the empirical studies on the use of history. Gulikers and Blom, who published the first comprehensive analysis of such studies, resume: most publications are anecdotic and tell the story of one specific teacher, whereas it is unclear whether and how the (generally positive) experiences can be transferred to other teachers, classes and types of schools (Gulikers & Blom, 2001, p. 223). Since my Mexico Lecture, Uffe Jankvist has undertaken, in his Ph.D. thesis, the most refined analysis of related empirical studies (Jankvist, 2009).
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Cornu mentions from Antiquity, the evident persons Zenon, Aristotle, and Eudoxos, from the Middle Ages, Oresme. From modern times, he just mentions Grgoire de St. Venant, Fermat, Newton, and extensively, Berkeleys critiquealthough not related to the limit concept, briefly Euler, a lot of dAlembert, a bit of Lagrange, and ends already with Cauchy. An enormous number of relevant authors and conceptions are hence not taken into account. Sierpinska (1985), also on the limit concept, is much more reduced in her historical evaluation: there are only a few words about Descartes, dAlembert, Lagrange, and Cauchy. In her book of 1994, where she studies the concept of continuity and the intermediate value theorem, she uses just one reference to this part of mathematics history: an old book by two French philosophers who resume some history of mathematics (Daval & Guilbaud, 1945). As a consequence, Sierpinska feels legitimated to assure regarding Cauchys concept of continuity: which is exactly what Cauchy wanted to say in his definition of a function continuous in a point (Sierpinska, 1994, p. 131). Rather, all newer historical research yielded that nobody any longer dares to affirm, which notion of continuity Cauchy really had in mind (see Ltzen, 1999, p. 207). Actually, the quality of the research of obstacles relies to an important extent on the reliability of the historical analysis: otherwise, the empirical findings on students difficulties are interpreted according to prejudices or to a common-day understanding about the nature of breaks, ruptures, and problems in the historical development. The demand for detailed and qualified historical research is the more imperative as historiography of mathematics traditionally tended to restrict itself to the ideas of the great men, the heroesan emphasis by which the real difficulties experienced by the larger contemporaneous mathematical community can hardly be taken into account, and even less so the socio-cultural dimensions, which feature prominently among the pleas for the use of history in teaching (Furinghetti, 2004, p. 3). Let us look at the experimental designs regarding the students behaviour dealing with the alleged epistemological obstacles. Cornu confronts a group of students, who had no prior teaching of calculus concepts, with six questions, all dealing with the meaning of tending towards. The first such question was: a car has as its maximal velocity 120 km/h. The car starts and accelerates steadily. Its velocity tends towards (a) 150 km/h, (b) 100 km/ h, (c) 120 km/h? (Cornu, 1983, p. 81). He wonders about the strange answers to such questions (Cornu, 1983, p. 82 and more pages). Sierpinska (1985) chooses two groups of two students, also without prior such teaching, but exposing them to iterated expositions, both of some historical and some conceptual content, and evaluates how the groups assimilated these pieces of information and made them operative. Evidently, such highly artificial situations of small groups can in no way claim to be representative for students in general. Moreover, the list of obstacles that she establishes is not derived from a historical analysis or from the students behaviour, but is stated practically as a postulate (Sierpinska, 1985, pp. 3738). Cornus list is likewise rather derived from his own ideas, and not from the historical analysis (Cornu, 1983, pp. 5457). Actually, the basic problem of the experimental design resides in the fact that it does not correspond to the theoretical conception. As Brousseau clearly stated in his theory, obstacles in learning are the result of conflicts between the acquired level of knowledge and the new knowledge. Yet, in his design for experimental studies, spontaneous reactions of students should be evaluated. Likewise, Cornu had proposed, concretising Brousseau, to name conceptions propres the kind of knowledge arising from the interaction between the spontaneous knowledgethat is the pre-instruction ideasand the knowledge taught (Cornu, 1983, p. 67). Yet he, too, studied the reactions of non-instructed students. Actually, it would not only have been rewarding to analyse his conceptions propres: it would have
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been essential for proving the hypothesis underlying the conception of epistemological obstacles. The apparent contradiction in the design of the respective studies is made explicit, maybe somewhat unintentionally, by a remark made by Tzanakis and Thomaidis in their study on the biogenetic law, which also applies to the epistemological obstacles: they ask about the meaning to draw a parallel between a creative mathematician of the past and a student learning mathematics in a modern classroom (Thomaidis & Tzanakis, 2007, p. 167; my italics). While other studies simply speak of former mathematicians, the remark makes obvious the assumption underlying the other studies, too: eminent, leading mathematicianshence, the preferred subjects of traditional historiographyare correlated to beginners or even uninformed students. An evident conceptual absurdity, which has, remarkably, not been commented upon so far. Furthermore, all the discussed genetic approaches and these last two in particular presuppose a universally homogeneous conceptual development over time. However, there does not exist a Gesamt-Intellektueller, an all-comprising intellectual. Conceptual developments occur within determinate and specific groups, the so-called scientific communities which have as primary references for their conceptual frames the values and norms of their particular cultural environment, their directly surrounding systemswhich one may shortly call context. Therefore, there likewise does not exist an absolute simultaneity or parallelism of conceptual developments in different cultures. 7.4 Critical analysis Eventually, it hadlikewisenever been investigated whether one of the normative pillars of the concept of epistemological obstacles was really justified, that is to say, whether a historical obstacle necessarily shows up as a learning obstacle. I therefore undertook a case study, which might work best to test this issue: it concerned the multiplication of quantities, which proved to constitute over various centuries a genuine conceptual obstacle in arithmetic, since multiplication had been restricted to pure numbersor, at best, to multiplying a quantity by a scalarand which characteristically no longer constitutes an obstacle in learning. This is essentially due to an epistemological switch, which had happened in the meantime: quantities do no longer constitute the conceptual foundation of mathematics (Schubring, 2005b). Resuming our discussion of the conceptions of epistemological obstacles and of the biogenetic law (or parallelism), we have to state that both are not adapted for a productive use of the history of mathematics. Both are normative approaches and thus hamperin addition to the indicated conceptual contradictionsempirical research in both domains, in history and in mathematics education: they are prejudicial for openended research. What remains therefore of the concept of epistemological obstacles as a productive concepteither for mathematics education, or for history of mathematics? Well, the weak points of this conception direct our attention to an indirect use for history, which in turn might be fruitful for didactical research: In order to fill the enormous gaps of knowledge about the mathematical thinking and practice in the larger group of mathematical practitioners, that is beyond the creative mathematicians, it constitutes a challenging task for the historiography of mathematics to study debates and controversies about the status and nature of relevant mathematical concepts. This use is not thought of in the way of deriving recipes for teaching, but as elements for the didactical research on epistemological obstacles and for the enrichment of the meta-knowledge of teacher students and of teachers.
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8 Errors in science A telling example for the exceptional position of mathematics has been formulated by the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, who has convincingly analysed epistemological ruptures in the exact sciences, but who has consciously excepted mathematics from these analyses: The history of mathematics is a miracle of regularity. There are periods of standstill, but it knows no periods of errors (Bachelard, 1975, p. 25; my translation). Actually, the notion of error as discussed here will provide a key to challenge this epistemological view, which is nurtured by the specific French tradition of rationalism, where mathematics appears as the measure and model for all the other sciences. In fact, research within mathematics education on errors is already at hands, which leads to a new access to historiography of mathematics. It is the research program of social interactionism, initiated and developed by the Bielefeld group: Bauersfeld, Krummheuer, and Voigt, since the 1980s, which provides the theoretical conceptions.13 The basis for this program is the philosophy of constructivism as developed in particular by von Glasersfeld: There exists no objective meaning of notions and concepts. Each individual constructs his own meanings given his experience and background. Different from von Glasersfelds conception, the Bielefeld group conceived of meaning making as a social and cultural process: it is only by the social interaction between the individuals that communication takes place; and that the individual constructions can gain a certain convergence, within a peer group. It is by the process of social interaction, that a specific construction becomes acknowledged as common knowledge, as objective (Bauersfeld, 1983). Mathematics teaching is particularly suited for studying the processes of establishing a common knowledge shared by the participants of the communication in a class since there is no direct exterior reality, which would allow testing the validity of the individual constructions. The teaching process can be described as a negotiation between teacher and students, where the teacher tries to establish working procedures, which may be more or less stable. The processes within a classroom are clearly understood as participating in a mathematizing culture, which has its social and cultural determinants (Bauersfeld, 1988). This research program has yielded very remarkable results and shown that what is usually seen, by the teacher, as errors might rather constitute misunderstandings: the students may see other notions in the material presented by the teacher than those the teacher had in mind. This concept of social interactionism need not remain restricted to school teaching and didactics. It can be applied equally well to research in mathematics and therefore to history, too. How does it happen that a new theory is adopted in mathematics, that a concept is regarded as rigorous or rejected as not rigorous, and that a proposition is regarded as false? This is neither by the decision of an individual nor by the universal insight of an eternal truth; rather, we find, here too, negotiating processes in the mathematical community, interactions in this social community, which determine acknowledgement or refutation. Before I discuss consequences of this view for the growth of mathematical knowledge, there is yet another dimension to mention in the didactical research on students errors relevant for history.
13
Paul Cobb, in his speech at ICME 11, after having received the ICMI Freudenthal medal, remembered the formative significance of his cooperation with this group. See also his report: ICMI encounters: Heinrich Bauersfeld, in: ICMI News no. 12, Sept. 2009.
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8.1 Content, communication, and objectivity In fact, in the didactical research on errors one does not locate all problems in the modes of interaction and in the communication process, but one also emphasizes possible causes in the mathematical content of the communication: In most of the didactical theories, the mathematical knowledge is taken as objective or an absolute precondition for learning, which will not be questioned. This starting point of didactics is, however, insofar not sufficient, as there exists no a priori evidence that the mathematical knowledge used for teaching really is complete, organized consistently and coherently and without missing links. Didactical research should be aware of inherent problems in mathematics itself: unsolved or even undetected problems in the logic or in the epistemology of mathematics, ambiguous or even misleading notations. The teacher who has been initiated into the language of mathematics and its peculiar operating procedures will not be able to note such inconsistencies, but the student as naive, as non-initiated, might be hindered by such problems inherent in mathematicswhat the teacher marks as error can be an indication for deficiencies within the mathematical knowledge. It is particularly this dimension of unsolved internal or epistemological problems in mathematics by which the teaching process can effect an impetus for progress in mathematics or can even effect ruptures within the established system of mathematics. This implies a productive use of mathematics history for didactical research, namely by supplying the means for analysing those conceptual, notational, or epistemological problems of mathematics, which are due to certain stages of the historical development and which effect errors or misunderstandings on the part of the students. Given these conceptual bases, I should now turn to the other relevant side, to the scientistand now not limited by a priori assumptions about a naivet of early scientists etc., but based on a productive role of interaction between research and learning.14 Hence, one is able to investigate more freely possible errors of scientists, and in particular, of mathematicians, and make them productive for teaching, in particular, for teacher formation. In present-day convictions, it seems to be unthinkable to acknowledge the possibility of serious errors in the history of mathematics, as exemplified by Bachelards exclusion of errors in mathematics. Earlier generations seem to have had less problems with such a possibility. A telling example is provided by Martin Gebhardt, the author of what one might call the first ICMI Study on the role of mathematics history for mathematics instruction in 1912. He assured: With the proof by history that error and controversy play their role and are important in mathematics, too, the abyss that separates it from other sciences, in particular also from the natural sciences, will disappear to a considerable degree. (Gebhardt, 1912, p. 8; my translation) And by errors, he meant, as he emphasized, not those which can happen to each mathematician, but those which are characteristic of an entire epochlike the conviction of convergence of the series 1 1 + 1 1 + 1 having as limit , defended by Grandi, Leibniz, and Euler, among others. And in 1904, E. Maillet, a French mathematician, had
14
There have not only been proposed approaches to study conceptual changes within scientific disciplines with conceptions from the cognitive sciences (see Nersessian, 2003), but also approaches which apply cognitive theories like constructivism and epistemological obstacles to the study of the development of mathematical ideas (Byers, 2007).
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called to collect remarkable errors of mathematicians, as an instance of self-reflection, in the journal LIntermdiaire des Mathmaticiens. The resulting collection was published in 1935 by Maurice Lecat (1935), a specialist in variational calculus. His book is not wellknown, neither in historiography nor in mathematics education. The collection documents about 500 errors, attributed to 330 mathematiciansamong them many minor figures, but also famous mathematicians. Lecat stated that there was only one famous mathematician who never committed an error: Evariste Galois. Thus, Lecat dedicated to him an honorary page, that is an empty page (Lecat, 1935, p. 39). Given this dimension and extension of committing errors in mathematical research, on the one hand, and the acceptance of errors as good mathematics over extended periods, I am now able to formulate my main hypothesis/research guideline/proposition: It is a consequence of the program of social constructivism, or social interactionism, that alleged students errors can no longer be called errors if they follow a definite strategy, jointly shared by that entire social group. Analogously, this applies to communities of scientists, too, and in particular, to mathematicians. Regarding chemistry, I should like to recall the phlogiston theory, which was accepted by chemists over centuries (see Kuhn, 1962). This specific claim of such an understanding of constructivism has to face the objection: where remains the objectivity of mathematics, which has always been maintained to be the major characteristic of this science?15 In fact, the consequence of my conception is that there exists no objectivity, at least no overall objectivity. It is not only in learning that meanings of concepts are subject to negotiation processes, so that differences in meanings established by various groups might disappear as the result of interactions when these groups get into communication and achieve shared meanings; in science, too, a common understanding will at first be restricted to social communities, which are tied together by certain conditions to form a basic unit of communication, say by sharing a common culture and language. Let me call this basic unit a scientific community of first order. In general, one can assume that these first order communities will share, too, a certain epistemological view of their subject. While there might co-exist different epistemological and conceptual views of mathematics in separate mathematical communities, there should begin processes of interaction at the moment when such separate communities come into contact with each other. Consequently, either the values and conceptions remain mutually alien so thatif there are no other pressures for establishing shared conceptionsthe communities will continue to be separated or a negotiation concerning the differences will begin with the effect of either certain compromises between the two sides or of the domination of one side by the other. 8.2 A few examples This hypothesis about a relative objectivity as result of negotiation processes between originally separated mathematical communities can be tested by investigating empirically in historynot as a clash of culturesbut by means of the effect when two cultures with different conceptions of knowledge get into contact or are even colliding, duesayto political instances.
15 Radford invoked the idea that mathematical knowledge is properly and intimately defined by the culture in which it develops and in which it is subsumed (Radford, 1997, p. 32). Such a theoretical claim affords, however, to study empirically the consequences to the encounter of different cultures and to the usually supposed universality of mathematics.
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A first such test is presented by the transmission of number signs and of decimal fractions from India to the Arab civilization, studied by Mahdi Abdeljaouad. As is well-known, our socalled Arab number signs are in reality Indian signs, as is the establishment of zero and of the decadal number system. The Arabs, like the Greeks, used the Phoenician manner of designing numbers by letters of the alphabet. And for fractions, they either used Babylonian sexagesimal fractions or Egyptian unit fractions. In the main period of Islamic culture, from the eighth to the tenth centuries, the Indian numbers and the decimal fractions had not found general acceptance, but rather resistance. Mathematicians like Abu-l-Wafa and Al-Karagi did not apply the Indian numbers. Al-Uqlidisi who had tried to overcome the rejections and to introduce them, by a significant textbook in 952, had no success and his book was forgotten, until a re-edition by Saidan in 1978 (Saidan, 1978). Historiographers like Moritz Cantor wondered about the low degree of use of the Indian decimal system.16 The resistance against the Indian way of mathematics is clearly documented by a polemic appreciation uttered by Al-Biruni in the eleventh century, in his introduction to the book History of India: The Indians to not dispose of philosophers like the Greeks who have exposed their subjects in their texts entirely scientifically. They have produced almost no book, which is not a downright junk, muddled and disordered, and where get mixed all varieties of popular beliefs. The spirit of authority dominates in them. As far as I am concerned, I can assure that their books of arithmetic and mathematics are comparable with nothing else than jewels mixed among piles of broken ceramics or with pearls hidden in the dung of camels. (quoted from Abdeljaouad, 1981, p. 80; my translation) The sexagesimal system persisted in Arab countries until the nineteenth century (Abdeljaouad, 1981). I have published a more recent example of mutually exclusive visions of mathematics in 2007: the case of Edmund Klp, the teacher of Georg Cantor who in his youth was educated according to the values of French mathematicsthat is to say of physicomathmatique: a vision of applied and applicable mathematics. When transferred to Germany, Klp had to suffer a purely formal, inapplicable mathematicsthe mathematics of permutations and transpositions of the German combinatorial school. Due to the incompatible meanings of this French and this German mathematics, Klp failed with his project to pursue an academic career at a German university and had to serve for decades in primary teacher education to make his livinguntil he managed to become a teacher at a trade school where some French mathematics was admissible (Schubring, 2007).17
9 Contributions from semiotics to the use of history Given that mathematics essentially deals with signs, semiotics has become a particularly prominent subject to be explored within mathematics education over the past decade, in particular since PME 25 at Utrecht in 2001. Several books have already been published (see Radford et al., 2008) and special issues of ESM (no. 61, 2006) and Relime (no. 9 (4), 2006)
16 Even Al-Khwarizmi understood the Indian number system as constituted by nine characters (Abdeljaouad, 1981, p. 79), thus excluding the zero as a number. 17 Two other, somewhat analogous case studies about the different visions of mathematics in France and in Germany are on Legendres use of the infinite for his proofs of the parallel postulate (Schubring, 2004) while such a use was refused in Germanyand on the conflicting notions of negative numbers (see Schubring, 2005a).
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have been devoted to this subject. Little attention has been given, so far, to the historical role of semiotics in the development of mathematics or to how this historical dimension might be used for mathematics teaching. In a concluding section, it will be briefly discussed whether a semiotic approach opens new avenues for the use of history in mathematics teaching. In fact, there is a forerunner for the present approaches to introduce semiotics into mathematics education: It is Karl (Carl) Menger (19021985), the important philosopher of the Vienna circle, as well as a logician, mathematician and economist.18 His approaches are serving exactly for those contributions from history desired in the preceding section, namely to unravel inherent problems in mathematics, like unsolved or undetected issues up to ambiguous or misleading notations. Since the late 1940s, Menger has published several papers and even a seminal book (Calculusa modern approach), which give excellent descriptions and analyses of inconsistencies in mathematics and notational ambiguities; a number of them remain to be solved even today and pupils and students are left with the obstacles to get through the misleading paths. Mengers approaches and proposals have been influential in the great curriculum projects in the USA, during the 1960s. In particular, he was a collaborator of the Comprehensive School Mathematics Project (CSMP), where his approaches were implemented in the teaching materials elaborated and tested. His publications are not only well instructed in history, in semiotics, and in teaching, but they are written with such a deep humour that it is a real pleasure to read his profound analyses. Menger has sharply criticized the negation of notational and conceptual problems arising from the weight of unchallenged history. In a perfectly satirical manner, he has denounced the sticking of mathematicians and mathematics educators to historical traditions in his series of papers on Gulliver, in particular in the first one entitled: Gulliver in the land without one, two, three (Menger, 1959). His starting point there is the juxtapositionhistorically to be often foundbetween the first numbers, treated as quantities (or named numbers) and the greater ones, treated as numbers. And he ridicules a didactical retrogression by which all numbers are treated as quantities or named numbers. Here, the mainstream mathematicians defending this antididactic transformation are called the IMMORTALS, which is an acronym for: The Islands Major Mathematicians of Real Talent and Learning (Menger, 1959). This invented example of retrogression, of a use of history where one needs to get liberated from historical dust, serves as an introduction to a key element in Mengers theories: the establishment of an algebra of functions. For this, he first criticizes a notational ambiguity, which causes many learning problems: the often missing distinction between a function and a value of this functionboth being usually designated by f(x) (or cumbersome formulations like: the function which is expressed by f(x)). Rather, one has to designate a function by its name; one is thus able to distinguish the function from its value at a certain point. More generally, however, his conclusion is that one does not need variables in calculus, that they constitute but dummies, and that one has rather to reflect on naming functions to be able to operate with functions. In this sense, he calls variables dummies and shows that these are elements of historical tradition, from which teaching has to be liberated (Menger, 1949). On the other hand, he develops his algebra of functions by the introduction of a notational innovation: the basic element of this algebra is the identity, the neutral element.
18
For his biography, see: Golland and Sigmund (2000).
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He calls it the function I, namely: I : x7!x; I 2 : x7!x2 And this otherwise neglected neutral element enables him to introduce an operational calculus with functions (Menger, 1961). Therefore, this new approach of semiotics implies a double role of the history of mathematics for teaching: on the one hand, it reveals outdated mathematical practices, which need to be discarded to improve the teaching learning process. On the other hand, it reveals forgotten or marginalized conceptions which had been established in some mathematical community in an earlier period and which need to be valorized and updated for present day teaching purposes. In fact, Mengers operational calculus is a direct continuation of the derivation calculus established by Arbogast in the wake of the French Revolutionexactly as a realization of the mthode analytique of the Enlightenment, which should contribute to disseminating the scientific knowledge (Friedelmeyer, 1994). It is not by accident that in these analytic approaches the role of symbols is decisive for clarifying the meaning of the concepts and for enhancing their teaching and learning. In fact, Mengers algebra of functions confirms again the systematic relation between processes of algebraization and reflection on the use of symbols. Semiotics promises fruitful impacts on the use of history for teaching! Regarding Mengers ideas, his contributions to the notations of functions have been quite largely implemented internationally in the teaching at secondary and higher education levels. Yet, his legacy constitutes treasures, which still remain to be better known, disseminated and implemented!
10 Conclusion Using the history of mathematics for the teaching of mathematics has become more and more an issue of general interest within mathematics education. Those approaches, which are most prominent at present, namely of epistemological obstacles and of the strangely resurrected parallelism/recapitulation do not provide, however, the expected productive outcomes for teaching. As normative, prescriptive didactic principles, they do not easily lend themselves to empirical verifications; this might explain the weaknesses analysed here in the reported empirical research. Particularly counterproductive are, moreover, the underlying visions of the history of mathematics: it is understood as a ready-made, achieved body of knowledge, which is beyond question and thus serves directly. The theoretical shortcomings comprise, furthermore, epistemological assumptions, in particular continuist visions of mathematical development proved to be underlying, so that no genuine notion of conceptual change is conceived of. On the other hand, there is no reason to despair. History of mathematics offers a richness of means for mathematics teaching. Toeplitzs notion of an indirect genetic approach already provides a decisive guideline: the major field of application should be teacher education enabling the future teachers to establish for themselves a meta-knowledge about mathematics. Clearly, one can no longer share his peculiar teleological view of development, assuming all the essence is already contained as a germ in Greek mathematics. Likewise, in order to learn from the difficulties in the emergence of new notions and concepts to unravel the conceptual depth and meaning from turning points in the history, one has to leave
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traditional historiography of mathematics, with its focus on the great mathematicians and their ideas, and to search for indications of conceptual developments in the respective community at large, thus adopting the new approaches in the historiography of mathematics, featuring the practices of mathematics. As was shown, these new understandings of mathematical developments not only need interdisciplinary work, adapting conceptions from general history, from sociology, psychology, etc., but also in particular research within mathematics education on learning processes, which will provide conceptualizations contributing to analyse more profoundly cognitive change in mathematical science, too. And there, it is the research on errors in mathematics learning that provides on the one hand new access to historiography of mathematics, and which becomes, on the other hand, in turn improved by the results of such remodelled research. Mathematics history is far from being achieved, on the contrary: exactly in order to serve and unravel the aspects of socio-cultural practices which are so strongly emphasized for teaching purposes, historical research is at its beginning only! And this research will profit enormously from aspects hitherto rather neglected: mathematics being largely a science of signs, semiotics provides promising contributions.
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Published online: 8 March 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

For his biography, see: Golland and Sigmund (2000).

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

Relating the evolution of mathematical concepts to mathematics learning

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