Human mathematics

This chapter discusses how we can think about mathematics as a human enterprise. It takes as its starting point the portrait of a European tradition that has considered mathematics as essentially a non-human realm. As a challenge to this tradition, a Wittgensteinian interpretation of mathematics as a special type of language among all the human languages is outlined and used to develop a platform for understanding mathematics as ‘human mathematics’. This conception is finally given shape through two discussions, first through a challenge to the positioning of mathematics in our contemporary universities in close proximity to the natural and technological sciences. Instead, a narrowing of the gap between the sciences and the humanities with a consequent repositioning of mathematics in the epistemological landscape of our knowledge institutions is advocated. Secondly, a human mathematics conception is discussed in relation to learning and teaching. Connections are made to socio-cultural learning theory, and it is argued that the concepts of ‘fog of mathematics’ and ‘centreless mathematics’ can help in reconfiguring how to think about the learning of ma thematics.