Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being by George Lakoff and Rafael E. Núñez

Abstract

This book announces a new academic discipline, the "cognitive science of mathematics" (p. XI), by demonstrating how an empirical examination of the ideas underlying our use of mathematical symbols and calculations must employ metaphors grounded in the "embodied mind." The authors ruthlessly attack what they dub "The Romance of Mathematics" (p. XV), their metaphor for any approach that treats mathematics as grounded in an abstract, disembodied yet objective reality that mysteriously provides the essential structure to the natural, human world.