Abstract
The terms learner, student, and mathematician are not neutral language that describe objective reality. Instead, these words, like all language, invite the speaker and a hearer to share in a common sense of the world. In this philosophical pondering on the language that researchers in mathematics use to refer to the subjects of mathematics education (i.e., learners, students, mathematicians), I begin to identify how this language is presumptive of either inequality (in the case of learner and student) or equality (in the case of mathematician). Mathematician, however, is not univocal in its meaning, instead there are two distinct ways that mathematician has been used: one as any knower and doer of mathematics and the other as people doing research in mathematics itself. I provide a genealogical discussion of mathematician, showing roots of both meanings among the ancient Greeks, with the former, broader sense rooted in the work of Aristotle while the later, more specialized sense is rooted in the Pythagorean tradition. Which legacy of the term mathematician should mathematics education researchers champion? The philosophical work of Jacques Rancière is central to the ways in which (in)equality is used here to interrogate the for-granted status of the terms and use of learner, student, and mathematician within research in mathematics education.
