Abstraction and Representation - Peter Damerow

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Résumé :
The author of this book is affiliated with the Center for Development and Socialization of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Ed? ucation in Berlin and heads its program on culture and cognition which de? votes its labors to the reconstruction of scientific concepts through history in a perspective of what might be called historical epistemology. He is also a member of a related research group in the newly founded Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Perhaps this double affiliation throws some light on the scope of Damerow's scientific interests. In any event it will explain why representatives of both these institutions join in an effort to introduce Peter Damerow's writings to an English speaking audi? ence. Damerow's scholarship ranges across widely different areas including philosophy and history of science, psychology, and education. Among his fields of expertise are the emergence of writing, early Babylonian mathe? matics, the history of arithmetic, the relationship between pure and applied mathematics, the theory and methods of mathematics instruction, the tran? sition from preclassical to classical mechanics, and the history and theory of relativity.

Sommaire:
Introduction. Part 1: On action and cognition. 1. Action and cognition in Piaget's genetic epistemology and in Hegel's logic. 2. Representation and meaning. Part 2: Education in context. 3. Philosphical and pedagogical remarks on the concept `Abstract'. 4. What is mathematical ability and how do ability differences emerge in mathematics education? 5. Mathematics education and society. 6. Preliminary remarks on the relationship of the principles of teaching arithmetic to the early history of mathematics. Part 3: Cultural evolution of arithmetical thinking. 7. The development of arithmetical thinking: on the role of calculating aids in ancient Egyptian and Babylonian arithmetic. 8. The first representations of numbers and the development of the number concept. 9. On the relationship between ontogenesis and historiogenesis of the number concept. Part 4: On historical epistemology. 10. Abstraction and representation. 11. The concept of labor in historical materialism and the theory of socio-historical development. 12. Tools of science. Name index. Subject index.