Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons^™

Applied Mathematics As Social Contract, Philip J. Davis

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

The author takes the position that mathematical education must redefine its goals so as to create a citizenry with sufficient knowledge to provide social backpressure on future mathematizations. This can be accomplished by increasing the part of mathematical education that is devoted to the description and interpretation of the processes of mathematization and by allowing the technicalities of the formal operations within mathematics itself to be deemphasized or automated out by computer.