Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T00:36:41.178Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Math schemata and the origins of number representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2008

Susan Carey
Susan Carey
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138scarey@wjh.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The contrast Rips et al. draw between “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches to understanding the origin of the capacity for representing natural number is a false dichotomy. Its plausibility depends upon the sketchiness of the authors' own proposal. At least some of the proposals they characterize as bottom-up are worked-out versions of the very top-down position they advocate. Finally, they deny that the structures that these putative bottom-up proposals consider to be sources of natural number are even precursors of concepts of natural number. This denial depends upon an idiosyncratic, and mistaken, idea of what a precursor is.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 6 , December 2008 , pp. 645 - 646
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Carey, S. (2004) Bootstrapping and the origins of concepts. Daedalus Winter issue, pp. 59–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, S. (in press) The origin of concepts. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, R. & Gallistel, C. R. (1978) The child's understanding of number. Harvard University Press/MIT Press. (Second printing, 1985. Paperback issue with new preface, 1986).Google Scholar
Nersessian, N. (1992) How do scientists think? Capturing the dynamics of conceptual change in science. In: Cognitive Models of Science, ed. Giere, R., pp. 3–44. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1960) Word and object. MIT Press.Google Scholar