How Writing Changes Mathematical Thought

Introduction It’s natural to think of math as being fundamentally abstract. Whether it’s invented or discovered, its truths are so literally universal that even aliens would agree (so the thinking goes) that 2 and 2 make 4. The actual work of mathematics, though, typically involves something utterly earthbound: “making marks on paper or blackboards,” said David E. Dunning, a historian of mathematics and curator of the history of science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History...