Every sane person lives in a double world, the outer and the inner world…Charles S. Peirce (1931–1958, Vol. 5, P.487)
Abstract
The comments below are meant to show that considerations of public and private realms and the tension between these realms arise in a natural and persistent way in discussions connected with semiotics. In particular, they arise out of the themes of body and sociocultural mathematical meaning-making, which are recurring themes of the papers in this volume. The public–private dichotomy is related to other dichotomies such as those between outer and inner and collective and individual. For educators, such dichotomies are important in that they reflect the division between students' own inner and individual understandings of mathematical ideas and their functioning within a shared sociocultural world of mathematical meanings.
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Notes
One might also take this as an instance of Peirce's “secondness,” and the thoughts arising from it Peirce's “energetic interpretant,” but I will not pursue this.
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Fried, M.N. Signs for you and signs for me: the double aspect of semiotic perspectives. Educ Stud Math 77, 389–397 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-011-9319-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-011-9319-0