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Mathematical concepts, objects, and symbols: where do they come from?

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Mathematical concepts, objects, and symbols: where do they

come from?
Some reflections about epistemology and didactics1
Isabelle Bloch - Professeure émérite - University of Bordeaux

Abstract: What are mathematical objects and concepts? Are they only abstractions or coming from
the real world? Since the 50ties, mathematicians and philosophers have elaborated new answers to
these very old questions. The 20th century has also been the one where these epistemological positions
had an impact on the decisions concerning the teaching of mathematics. Studies on the semiotic facet
of mathematics have also been undertaken. Researchers in didactic of mathematics take position
themselves more or less clearly on these epistemological questions which anyway deserve to be
lightened.

Key-words: mathematical concepts, idealities, mathematical symbols, epistemology.

This text comes from questions and reflections about the 'true' nature of mathematics, the
avatars of the construction of notions, and difficulties people point out in their teaching. In a
first time, I revisit a little the epistemology of mathematics and the historical/philosophical
developments of their construction. Reflections about the nature of mathematical concepts
may have sometimes helped to adjust the institutional choices in their teaching, as in the
70ties. And anyway, representations of mathematics clearly influence pedagogical and
didactical decisions – including individual ones.
Mathematical concepts
What is mathematics? Which is the nature of the concepts they deal with and control? These
questions have been all the time a foundation for philosophical reflections by mathematicians
and epistemologists.
We know the Platonic conception: mathematical entities exist in an essential and independent
way, no matter which close constructions are developed by mathematicians. This conception
is linked to a metaphysical thesis, actually an ontological one, in which the closeness of the
human soul with the intelligible and eternal realities makes it (the soul) able to seize them and
to cope with them.
Another conception is totally the opposite: it sustains that these concepts gain their existence
only in the mathematicians' mind, and it leads to be amazed of what have been called their
"unreasonable effectiveness" to solve problems in the real world. This conception is for
instance Brouwer's and the intuitionists, who develop this kind of thinking in the continuity of
Kant's and Schopenhauer's. It nevertheless comes against the formalism of the Bourbaki
group, which argues that the consistency of the existence of mathematical objects is attested
by the formal relations that exist in the theory they 'live' in; and the pragmatic use of these
objects – their ergonomics and the ability of doing maths and obtain results with them – is
only supported by their theoretical coherency, i.e. the fact there is no contradiction within the
logical theory.

1
This text is a translation of an article published in the Cahiers rationalistes, n°631. See also union-
rationaliste.org. Thanks to Alain Billecoq, Michel Henry and Jean-Pierre Kahane who have read this text and
helped me to finalize it.
 2

This does not mean of course that mathematics is only reduced to a set of formal rules, as
some people could have interpreted wrongly. We can notice that for teaching in particular, an
intervention of specialists of the subject is always problematic: misunderstandings can occur,
and the tools for such an introduction have to be thoroughly thought and tested.
A necessary revisiting of the mathematics from the middle of the 20th century has been
initiated in the 70th, by the Bourbaki group, and we notice that it allowed new mathematical
fields to develop and the French math school to be one of the best in the world.
For the intuitionists, the formal language does not allow to think about continuum and infinity
as if they just 'exist': you have to declare that you can conceive mathematical objects beyond
this formalism. It is supposed to be an aptitude of the human mind of being able to indulge in
this game of discovering concepts which this mind would contain implicitly.
Actually, from the 19th and mainly the 20th centuries, mathematicians have developed tools
(as the set theory or the category one, real or complex analysis, general topology, measure
theory, vector space of infinite dimension, etc.) which do not evoke any perceptible objects,
but are formal structures applicable to number of mathematical fields or topics coming from
other sciences, including the more recent (probability and statistics, algorithmic, informatics;
physics of the quanta, etc.). The efficiency of these theories comes from their level of
abstraction, which is the feature that allows a same kind of structure to be suited to the study
of very diverse phenomenon.
This conception of mathematical concepts as being lawful within a theory and because of the
existence of this theory, this representation goes against a materialistic conception based upon
the application of maths: mathematics would be only the formal denotation of physical
realities; in other words, mathematics would be material obvious facts that have been
(re)formulated with abstract terms. We have to notice that since at least the 20th century
epistemology of experimental sciences has transcended this conception down-to-earth of
mathematical constructions by introducing the notion of mathematical modelling.
But, as Jean Toussaint Desanti says:
"Si la mathématique n'est ni du Ciel ni de la Terre, il importe de chercher le lieu où elle réside.
Quel est donc ce lieu où s'inscrit le texte selon lequel nait la stricte parole mathématique ?"
(Desanti, 1968). (If mathematics does not come from Heaven or Earth, it is important to identify
the position where it resides. What is this place where is inscribed the text in accordance with the
birth of the literal mathematical words?)
Actually the modern philosophy of the nature of mathematical objects (according to Desanti
and after him, Jean Petitot, 1991) leads to another conception of their essence: they are
entities (idealities says Desanti: every mathematical object is a concept, so it is totally
theoretical) built within the articulation of mathematical theories, but coming from the
experience. In other words, mathematical objects exist by and within their relations with other
objects already existing or being in construction, but their origin comes from the first objects
humanity has elaborated, such as things useful in the practice of carpentry or the social
necessity of commerce.
The structure of relations between these objects allows certifying their existence because it
permits to act on them with more or less complex 'operations' that always respect the rules of
the theory at stake. Considering that the first mathematical objects have been built in a narrow
connection with the necessity of counting, measuring, etc. we can see that further objects have
first leaned on these first concepts and then, building by building, have acquired more abstract
features, even if not quite disconnected of their first origin.
 3

Let us give an example: a first object being existing from the experience – the numbers for
instance – human beings will then be able to build rules for calculation, and from these rules
algebra will emerge; from algebra and the set of laws about the way you can convert algebraic
expressions you can imagine functions, which in a first period will be algebraic; but then you
can expect this concept of function being increased by considering non rational processes of
measure, as trigonometric functions; from the concept of function then come the derivatives,
integrals, that allow to conceive new functions with new properties, etc.
Remember that we speak of the definition of mathematical concepts, and not of their
pragmatic utilisation or the way they were discovered. It is clear that the inhabitants of
various countries did not wait for the writing of cosine x to discover what a wheel could be,
how the circular uniform motion worked, and the geometric figures that represent them.
Let us think of the observation of the sky, the planets motion, or the Vietnamese people using
a noria to draw water: most often, the pragmatic existence of objects comes before their
theoretical and conceptual foundation.
But only this groundwork about the determination of concepts can incorporate them in a
system of validation where they are linked with other previously existing objects. Maybe we
can see better this building – stemming from the real world but then emancipating from it –
when we think of geometry, with a construction in the experience of Euclidean geometry,
then considering sphere geometry (referring of course to the Earth geometry) and after that,
non Euclidean geometries that have been built 'arbitrarily' or let us say, taking into account
the phenomenon people had to describe and internal necessities of the mathematical
calculation. The theory of differentiable varieties, fiber spaces… is a result of this elaboration.
The nature of mathematical objects conveys their mode of validity and therefore this way of
construction leads to the methods used in mathematics to prove an assertion: a mathematical
statement must be necessary in the related theory and can be proved only by the tools in this
theory, even if other appropriate devices allow experiencing the way the objects operate. So in
mathematics the truth is necessary and not contingent: you can enounce false or absurd
properties on these objects2, but a proper experience on a relevant example will be able to
show if the tested property may be true; and a formal proof will show which the true property
is.
Devices may be rather simple for 'primary' objects as integers to count finite collections; in a
complex theory of course, devices to ensure the validity of conjectures are much more
difficult to conceive and to verify. Ultimately a mathematician will prove the validity of its
assertions only with a formal reasoning in the related theory. Theories have then to be based
on an axiomatics which will be in charge to say which theorems are valid or not. The Gödel
theorem confirms then that in every theory it remains statements that are unprovable in the
same theory.
These internal considerations do not resolve the eternal problem of the link between objects of
the real world and mathematical abstractions. As we said, these connections have always been
asserted in scientific theorisations but they have not been easy to exhibit and to clarify. We
come back to this issue from the point of view of the open methodology that has been
developed through the 20th century.
Then we will attach our interest on the symbolic signs mathematics work with, their unusual
nature and the misunderstandings they can create. Semiotic studies are more and more often

2
And it is absolutely licit, in spite of sometimes very strong reactions by some teachers…
 4

undertaken in didactics of mathematics with the aim of understanding which signs are used at
different levels of mathematical expertise and what are the obstacles for the students.
From the real world to mathematics: schematisation and modelling, according to
Gonseth
Number of researchers tried to decrypt the link between the real objects and mathematical
concepts, but one of them built a system to explain and elaborate this connection: the Swiss
mathematician Ferdinand Gonseth (1890-1975). Gaston Bachelard, Paul Bernays and
Ferdinand Gonseth created an international journal of philosophy of knowledge: Dialectica.
Between 1945 and 1955 he wrote a six volumes book: La géométrie et le problème de
l'espace (Geometry and the space problem). The philosophy of Gonseth wants to think the
relationship between mathematics and the world of real experience in a concern of truth and
reality.
Then he says that we can go from this reality to a schema of it, a schema being something
written or drew… a representation that tends to abstraction but must maintain a part of the
relations between the real objects. As Bontems (2014) says:
Gonseth gives an 'experimentable' character to geometry, which he then spreads to algebra and
logic.
A schema is built in what Gonseth calls a horizon of reality, which can be more or less
abstract depending on the aimed level of conceptualisation. For instance, a geometry figure
will unequivocally be included in a horizon of Euclidean geometry, but a carpentry plan will
only evoke it implicitly and won't formalize the same way relations between parallels,
orthogonality, etc. The abstract argumentation will then lean on this imperfect schema to
develop a more achieved knowledge in a formal horizon of reality.
Nevertheless, Gonseth always sustained, according to Bachelard, that formal logic cannot be a
foundation of a knowledge theory, just as mathematical concepts cannot be 'flatten' on the real
world where schematisation comes from. Gonseth philosophy is actually close to Bachelard
one. For them, mathematical objects are not ideal constructions of human spirit, as Brouwer
pretends; neither are they mere consequences of the real objects, but there exists a dialectics
of their building.
Let us think to the further considerations by Desanti: then the scaffold buildings of
mathematics from their first conceptualisation becomes clearer – the matter is not to reject
formalism or intuitionism but to look at mathematicians, the purpose being to see when they
use, alternatively, pragmatic proofs, formal demonstrations, or intuition based justifications.
And this converges with the theories in didactics of mathematics, which observe these
comings there and back within the learning situations and the conceptualisation process – we
will just evoke this below.
What we now try to find out is the nature and the usefulness of mathematical signs that allow
building those more or less complex schemas with different levels of formalisation and
conceptualisation.
Mathematical signs
The fundamental nature of mathematics impacts the signs with which we do mathematics:
those symbols are governed by internal and intrinsic rules. For instance, algebraic signs
operate their suitable way that leads to factorise, simplify, derive, integrate, which would be
absurd with the signs of common language. We notice that mathematics speak through a
number of registers: numerical, algebraic, functional, graphical, geometrical, formal are the
common registers usually identified.
 5

As many researchers use to say, signs are the tools of the mathematical work. Without
mastering their intern rules of writing, transformation, change of register, it remains
impossible to make mathematics, and overall to prove by valid demonstrations.
Mathematical signs are especially multifaceted and as we said, their organisation is very
codified; nevertheless, some signs take very different meanings, according to the context –
numerical, algebraic, geometrical one. A philosopher, semiotician, himself a mathematician
too, is very well known and built a semiotic theory that fits perfectly to the multiplicity and
the complexity of mathematical writings: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is the founder -
with William James - of American pragmatism and, with Ferdinand de Saussure, he his the
creator of modern semiotics and one of the greatest logicians.
Peirce's general semiotics3 is created to study classes of very diverse signs, and thereby
adjusted to mathematics. Moreover, Peirce does not dissociate thinking from its signs, and he
puts forward a dynamic interpretation of the link between a sign and an object: the meaning of
a sign is to be understood by the related actions and uses to which it gives rise. This
interpretation allows considering the alterations of symbols and statements at different stages
of mathematical thinking, teaching and learning. This way of taking into account the dynamic
aspect allows imagining further studies about the implementation of registers: we can
associate this feature to the operational dimension of mathematical signs, that is, the
possibility of 'fabricate' new signs by more or less algorithmic rules.
Let us insist on the strong dimensions of the peircean pragmatics4:
• In this pragmatics, the thinking is not one side and, the other side, the signs that
'represent the thinking' or 'realize' or 'mediatise' it: the thinking is, from its nature
itself, a sign. A thinking is not always a word but it can be an image, an impression of
something… If I am thinking of the green colour, I will have an impression of green…
• Every sign is triadic and made of three elements which are functions and not
attributions: the representamen R; the object O which is represented by R; the
interpretant which put in relation R and O. As Peirce says:
A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some
respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an
equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the
interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object,
not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground
of the representamen. “Idea” is here to be understood in a sort of Platonic sense, very familiar in
everyday talk; I mean in that sense in which we say that one man catches another man’s idea, in
which we say that when a man recalls what he was thinking of at some previous time, he recalls
the same idea, and in which when a man continues to think anything, say for a tenth of a second,
in so far as the thought continues to agree with itself during that time, that is to have a like
content, it is the same idea, and is not at each instant of the interval a new idea. (Peirce,
Collected Papers 2-228, 1897).
These three 'places' R, O and I are functions identified in a given semiotic process: so 'apple'
may be a representamen of the object 'apple', or 'apple' may be an interpretant of the word
'golden', or 'apple' may be the object of a translation… or 'Apple' may evoke a trademark of
computers! In a semiotic process a sign interpretant depends on the context in which it is
formulated.

3
This paragraph comes from the text of Bloch & Gibel (2011).
4
For a more complete description of the peircean pragmatics, go to the texts of C.S. Peirce, cf. the website
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/index or http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/torkild/p-tritor.htm
 6

The meaning of a sign is never definitive because the interpretation is a process which
ultimate meaning is still to happen. If a sign is a triad, then the interpretant of this triad can in
turn become a representamen which is the starting point of a new sign-triad and therefore a
new interpretation.
For Peirce, every phenomenon (and thus, any instance of the thought-sign) belongs to one of
the three following categories: firstness: a category of general quality, of possibility, where
signs are icons, like the impression of green above; secondness that points out existence,
facts, actions and reactions, signs are indexes, like: all this green comes from the spring grass
in the mountain…, as Peirce says, " An index represents its object by a real correspondence
with it"; and thirdness which is the token of the law, whose written shapes are symbols
enclosing a rule of interpretation that is called an argument.
Mathematical phenomenon and their signs all belong to the order of secondness or thirdness:
mathematical interpretants of a situation lead to enounce rules and properties of mathematical
objects. Nevertheless:
1. all the mathematical rules do not refer to the same level, for instance the interpretation
of '3' requires an indexical relationship – that says something of its object – because
there is a law putting in relation the sign '3' and the cardinal of a three elements set.
But '145' is an 'argument' sign that implies the thirdness relation and is called 'symbol'
by Peirce: to connect this sign to the appropriate cardinal you have to be aware of the
numeration rule at work.
The Argument represents its Object in its capacity as a sign. This means that something is being
stated about the sign. An example of an Argument could be whole passages of text, i.e.
meaningful links of Dicent Signs. I emphasize this interpretation and state that Arguments could
very well be knowledge domains, cultures, societies etc. The Argument is a sum of knowledge
structured through Rhemes and Dicent signs. In the discussion to follow, I interpret the
Argument as a sign of culture which mediates between nature and man. 5
2. people practicing mathematics – students for instance – do not always see the signs
with the right level of interpretation: so a number could be seen by some students as a
sequence of figures, with the consequence that the student could not see the rule in the
number – which means do not link this number with a quantity. A representamen will
then be interpreted erratically, depending on the semiotic level the actual interpretant
will be: a sign of a given level can be interpreted at a lower level, which we call
'interpretative deflation'. Let us point out that this phenomenon of interpretative
deflation can occur frequently at every level of mathematics teaching, and it is
compatible with Peirce's theory of the meaning to emerge afterward, as we said above:
the mathematician – for instance a teacher – speaks of a concept whose understanding
will be rather comprehensive only when the learner will be in relation with the same
concept but through different objects of the same theory or of other related theories –
let us think for instance to the concepts of limit or integrals.
Teach mathematics
Mathematics then have a heuristic dimension – by researching solutions, establishing
conjectures, doing experiences – which we can find as well in the teaching as in research.
This component is linked with the real dimension of mathematics, according to Gonseth: this
means that in mathematics you can – at least initially – try pragmatic proofs, draw figures,

5
http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/torkild/p-tritor.htm, 2015-05-04
 7

calculations, do experimentations, and rely on intuition, which mathematician, inexperienced

or not, do not fail to do.
On the other side a mathematician (or a student-mathematician) who tries to find the solution
of a problem will be able to proceed in a formal system and prove his assertions only with the
codified rules of the mathematical theory at stake, without being destabilized because this
system is confirmed and allows to test the validity of a theorem or a property. We will then
speak of interior games, according to Hintikka, the founder of formal epistemic logic and of
game semantics for logic (see Hintikka 1998; also Barrier, 2008; Barrier et al. 2009).
But the researcher (experienced or not) could sometimes feel the need to convince her/himself
of the soundness of her/his method, and she/he will come back to the problem context,
experimenting the consistency of her/his solution by an intuitive assessment of the objects at
stake to be able to say: "This outcome is reliable considering my first assumptions, I feel
backed up by the coherence of my calculations and my solution". We speak then of exterior
games: the researcher has come out the formal system.
Peirce's pragmatics – i.e. the implementation of its system of categories through situations –
allows initiate thinking about the possible mechanisms of construction of situations including
a heuristic dimension leaning on this dynamics: the goal is to teach mathematics whilst
linking the different mathematical objects related to the theme that is taught. It is also possible
to analyze – a priori or a posteriori – the semiosis in play within the situation, that is, the
interpretative processes that are possible, or actually used, within the available sign system.
The TDS – Theory if Didactical Situations – has been elaborated by Guy Brousseau6 at the
beginning of the seventies and try to build such situations. These constructions are not only
confined in elementary mathematics: more and more didacticians try to elaborate such
situations including high-level knowledge as functions or integrals or differential calculus, the
ambition being to work about the meaning of concepts (see Bloch 2003; Gonzalez-Martin &
al. 2014). It also possible to link the teaching of mathematics and the one of experimental
sciences… it could be the issue of another text…
The practicability of such situations depends only on the builder's capacity of maintaining
their mathematical pertinence and their achievability – and these conditions are important and
not so easy to attain. It follows that different and complementary theories are able to
undertake this work of building a mathematical meaning at every level. As I wrote in the
preface of S. Ag Almouloud's book on didactics:
Didactic theories are also involved in the teachers studies, their function, the ergonomics of the
situations they can assume in the classroom, the constraints they put up with, their professional
and didactic training; these theories have also an aim of modelling the students' productions
when they are in position of learning.
The destiny of theories in human sciences is to multiply in order to adapt to this complex reality
and become able to reflect it. Their multiplicity is not to be seen as a deficiency because it is
part of the mutations and normal evolutions of a research field development. History of sciences
– and even of experimental sciences or mathematics – shows that theories are built and then
modified; some of them disappear or are absorbed within a more ergonomic or more
accomplished one. We know that Maxwell's theory of magnetic fields unifies the electric and
magnetic theories; relativity reinterprets the Newtonian theory of gravitation replacing the
notion of distance strength by the curvature of space-time that mass produces.

6
See www.guy-brousseau.com
 8

In mathematics the theories of convergence or integrals from the 19th century had to be extended
and put forward to avoid contradictions that mathematicians of this century did not imagine…
Human sciences are peculiar versus mathematics: concepts related to observed phenomenon are
to be built – but it is the same in experimental sciences, says the philosopher and physicist
M.Blay. Moreover, in the field of human activities, checking of the pertinence of theories can
only be done by a confrontation with the contingence that may prove to be difficult: a researcher
ought not to take her/his study frames for the reality, since this reality has been re-built to be
observed and analyzed. (Bloch I., Prefacio, translated to English)
We will conclude that the complexity of mathematics, of their signs system, of the situations
which give their meaning and consistency, of their teaching… cannot be solved simply by
declaring that mathematics are tools for other sciences, or that it is a fabulous construction but
apart of the world realism… the authenticity of mathematics is much more sophisticated and
interesting, for the great pleasure of mathematicians!

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