Abstract
Robotics, artificial intelligence and, in general, any activity involving computer simulation and engineering relies, in a fundamental way, on mathematics. These fields constitute excellent examples of how mathematics can be applied to some area of investigation with enormous success. This, of course, includes embodied oriented approaches in these fields, such as Embodied Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Robotics. In this chapter, while fully endorsing an embodied oriented approach to cognition, I will address the question of the nature of mathematics itself, that is, mathematics not as an application to some area of investigation, but as a human conceptual system with a precise inferential organization that can be investigated in detail in cognitive science. The main goal of this piece is to show, using techniques in cognitive science such as cognitive semantics and gestures studies, that concepts and human abstraction in general (as it is exemplified in a sublime form by mathematics) is ultimately embodied in nature.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bates, E., Dick, F.: Language, Gesture, and the Developing Brain. Developmental Psychobiology 40(3), 293–310 (2002)
Cienki, A.: Metaphoric gestures and some of their relations to verbal metaphoric expressions. In: Koenig, J.-P. (ed.) Discourse and Cognition, pp. 189–204. CSLI Publications, Stanford (1998)
Courant, R., Robbins, H.: What is Mathematics? Oxford, New York (1978)
Fauconnier, G., Turner, M.: Conceptual Integration Networks. Cognitive Science 22(2), 133–187 (1998)
Fauconnier, G., Turner, M.: The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. Basic Books, New York (2002)
Goldin-Meadow, S., Mylander, C.: Gestural communication if deaf children: The effects and non-effects of parental input on early language development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 49(3), 207 (1984)
Henderson, D.: Experiencing geometry. Prentice Hall, Upper SaddleRiver (2001)
Hersh, R.: What is mathematics, really? Oxford Univ. Press, New York (1997)
Hickok, G., Bellugi, U., Klima, E.: The neural organization of language: Evidence from sign language aphasia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2(4), 129–136 (1998)
Iverson, J., Goldin-Meadow, S.: Why people gesture when they speak. Nature 396, 228 (1998)
Iverson, J., Thelen, E.E., Núñez, R., Freeman,W., (eds.) : Reclaiming cognition: The primacy of action, intention, and emotion, pp. 19–40. Imprint Academic, Thorverton (1999)
Kendon, A.: Gesticulation and Speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In: Key, M.R. (ed.) The relation between verbal and nonverbal communication, pp. 207–227. Mouton, The Hague (1980)
Kendon, A.: Language and gesture: unity or duality? In: McNeill, D. (ed.) Language and gesture, pp. 47–63. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
Lakoff, G.: The contemporary theory of metaphor. In: Ortony, A. (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn., pp. 202–251. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1993)
Lakoff, G., Johnson, M.: Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1980)
Lakoff, G., Núñez, R.: The metaphorical structure of mathematics: Sketching out cognitive foundations for a mind-based mathematics. In: English, L. (ed.) Mathematical Reasoning: Analogies, Metaphors, and Images, Erlbaum, Mahwah (1997)
Lakoff, G., Núñez, R.: Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. Basic Books, New York (2000)
McNeill, D.: Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought. Chicago University Press, Chicago (1992)
Mayberry, R., Jaques, J.: Gesture production during stuttered speech: insights into the nature of gesture-speech integration. In: McNeill, D. (ed.) Language and Gesture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
Narayanan, S.: Embodiment in Language Understanding: Sensory-Motor Representations for Metaphoric Reasoning about Event Descriptions. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Computer Science, University of California at Berkeley (1997)
Núñez, R.: Could the Future Taste Purple? In: Núñez, R., Freeman, W. (eds.) Reclaiming cognition: The primacy of action, intention, and emotion, pp. 41–60. Imprint Academic, Thorverton (1999)
Núñez, R.: Mathematical idea analysis: What embodied cognitive science can say about the human nature of mathematics. In: Opening plenary address in Proceedings of the 24th International Conference for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Hiroshima, Japan, vol. 1, pp. 3–22 (2000)
Núñez, R.: Fictive and metaphorical motion in technically idealized domains. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Logroño, Spain, July 20-25, p. 215 (2003)
Núñez, R.: Creating Mathematical Infinities: The Beauty of Transfinite Cardinals. Journal of Pragmatics (in press)
Núñez, R., Edwards, L., Matos, J.F.: Embodied Cognition as grounding for situatedness and context in mathematics education. Educational Studies in Mathematics 39(1-3), 45–65 (1999)
Núñez, R., Lakoff, G.: What did Weierstrass really define? The cognitive structure of natural and ε-δ continuity. Mathematical Cognition 4(2), 85–101 (1998)
Núñez, R., Lakoff, G.: The Cognitive Foundations of Mathematics: The Role of Conceptual Metaphor. In: Campbell, J. (ed.) Handbook of Mathematical Cognition, Psychology Press, New York (in press)
Núñez, R., Sweetser, E.: Proceedings of the 7th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Santa Barbara, USA, July 22-27, pp. 249–250 (2001)
Sweetser, E.: From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge University Press, New York (1990)
Sweetser, E.: Regular metaphoricity in gesture: bodily-based models of speech interaction. In: Actes du 16e Congrès International des Linguistes, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1998)
Talmy, L.: Fictive motion in language and “ception”. In: Bloom, P., Peterson, M., Nadel, L., Garrett, M. (eds.) Language and Space, MIT Press, Cambridge (1996)
Talmy, L.: Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science 12, 49–100 (1988)
Talmy, L.: Toward a Cognitive Semantics: Concept Structuring Systems, vol. 1. MIT Press, Cambridge (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Núñez, R. (2004). Do Real Numbers Really Move? Language, Thought, and Gesture: The Embodied Cognitive Foundations of Mathematics. In: Iida, F., Pfeifer, R., Steels, L., Kuniyoshi, Y. (eds) Embodied Artificial Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3139. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27833-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27833-7_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22484-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-27833-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive