Mathematics, a third way

Extract

As I write (Spring 2012) I am aware that I have been a member of the Mathematical Association for fifty years. I joined during the annual conference in 1962 when Dr Combridge was the main figure in the society. The highlight was a session at the conference (at King's College, London) by Geoffrey Matthews showing how matrices might be introduced into the school curriculum. Some treated this as hilarious, others as a signpost to the future. My friend Frank Budden and I regarded it as a premature ploy, which, we thought, might not tum out to be such a good idea. We subsequently wrote a successful book Mathematics through Geometry (1964) arguing in detail why the modem mathematics revolution—which was then gathering pace—might end in tears. We identified spatial imagination as the heartland of mathematics, and contrasted it with a denial of spatial imagination in the abstract calculi which were all the vogue at the time.