RUME 26
2024
Omaha, Nebraska
Bridging Mathematics: To Care for an Abstraction
Page: 1315
This theoretical poster engages with and presents dominant undergraduate mathematics topics as lively forces with rich potentialities for connection beyond disciplinary mathematics. More specifically, this poster offers both (a) a theoretical contribution to engage with undergraduate mathematics as situated, open, and lively (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2013; Mikulan & Sinclair, 2023); and (b) a potential bridge to resurface and generate connections between undergraduate mathematics and philosophical ideas that are often left out of mathematics classrooms. For example, we can use the concept of isomorphism to invite wonderings such as: where does the persistent occupation for ‘sameness of forms/structures’ in dominant mathematics come from? We invite our field to, as Mikulan and Sinclair (2023) write, care for an abstraction: “To care for an abstraction is to make sure you haven’t extended it too far, forgotten the contingencies on which it depends, applied it flippantly or use it to foreclose thinking” (p. 70).