Abstraction and Representation

Deals with the development of thinking under different cultural conditions, focusing on the evolution of mathematical thinking in the history of science and education. This book provides a conceptual framework for describing and explaining the development of cognition by reflective abstractions from systems of actions.

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The author of this book is affiliated with the Center for Development and Socialization of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Ed­ ucation in Berlin and heads its program on culture and cognition which de­ votes its labors to the reconstruction of scientific concepts through history in a perspective of what might be called "historical epistemology." He is also a member of a related research group in the newly founded Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Perhaps this double affiliation throws some light on the scope of Damerow's scientific interests. In any event it will explain why representatives of both these institutions join in an effort to introduce Peter Damerow's writings to an English speaking audi­ ence. Damerow's scholarship ranges across widely different areas including philosophy and history of science, psychology, and education. Among his fields of expertise are the emergence of writing, early Babylonian mathe­ matics, the history of arithmetic, the relationship between pure and applied mathematics, the theory and methods of mathematics instruction, the tran­ sition from preclassical to classical mechanics, and the history and theory of relativity.