Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway; SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Andrea Bender
Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway; SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Stephen Chrisomalis
Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
Fiona M. Jordan
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
Karenleigh A. Overmann
Center for Cognitive Archaeology, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Geoffrey B. Saxe
Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Dirk Schlimm
Department of Philosophy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Abstract
In their recent paper on “Challenges in mathematical cognition”, Alcock and colleagues (Alcock et al. [2016]. Challenges in mathematical cognition: A collaboratively-derived research agenda. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2, 20-41) defined a research agenda through 26 specific research questions. An important dimension of mathematical cognition almost completely absent from their discussion is the cultural constitution of mathematical cognition. Spanning work from a broad range of disciplines – including anthropology, archaeology, cognitive science, history of science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology – we argue that for any research agenda on mathematical cognition the cultural dimension is indispensable, and we propose a set of exemplary research questions related to it.
