PHILOSOPHY, MATHEMATICS AND EDUCATION

Resumo

From Aristotle up to the Baroque knowledge was considered as essentially determined by its object. Since Kant and his so-called Copernican Revolution of Epistemology the epistemic subject and the method and means of its activities become equally, or even more important. Mathematics is, first of all, an activity, which has increasingly liberated itself from metaphysical and ontological agendas. As a consequence, the sense of mathematical symbolizations acquired partial independence from reference. The theories of modern science are schemes of interpretation of objective and socio-historical reality, rather than images of it. To observe the dynamics of the complementarity of sense and reference of symbolic representations becomes an important way of all knowledge related research. Perhaps more than any other practice, mathematical practice requires a complementarist approach, if its dynamics and meaning are to be properly understood.