The Origin of Concepts

I’m interested in how mathematicians create mathematics but this book made me realize that learning mathematics is also a form of creativity. Each of us has created our understanding of mathematics as we were growing up. We are all creative!  

What is amazing about this book is that even children as young as six months possess rudimentary mathematical concepts, in particular, the concept of number. (Actually, Carey shows children have two distinct ways of thinking about numbers). The concept of number is built-in. That’s amazing to me! The mastery of counting numbers, 1,2,3,… is a great creative leap in the… show more.

Scientific concepts, like genes and germs, elude observation and intuition. So where do they come from? Carey charts the development of such concepts, from innate perceptual biases to abstract symbolic representations. She presents research investigating the evolved foundations of human knowledge (core knowledge), as well as methods for revising and reorganizing that knowledge, yielding new concepts and theories (conceptual change). This book integrates insights from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and comparative psychology to address longstanding philosophical questions about humans’ ability to transcend the small repertoire of concepts we are born with and grasp ideas that no other species can.