3354

Andreas Moutsios-Rentzos & Panagiotis Spyrou

philosophy of mathematics education

2015

29

need for proof , proof , argument , polis , Husserl , phenomenology

The students’ internal need for proof is at the crux of their learning mathematics. In this essay, we present a multi-faceted reading of the historical genesis of proof in ancient Greece, including socio-cultural, economic and epistemological aspects. We argue that by re-visiting this reading through Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology a didactical framework that fosters the students’ fully-fledged need for proof may be built. Importantly, we posit that, in contrast with existing approaches, this framework allows for the students’ developing internal need for organising the corpus of mathematical knowledge within a deductively derived structure.