Special Topic:

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PSYC471: Special Topic: Mathematical Cognition

There is something mysterious, even miraculous, about how mathematics is so deeply embedded in our mental and physical worlds.  An abstract creation of the human mind, mathematics provides the basis for theories that describe the physical world with astonishing degrees of accuracy.  Mathematical objects such as a circle or triangle seem to exist in a Platonic realm of ideas that is somehow open to our introspection, and new areas of maths invented solely for curiosity turn out centuries later to be essential for understanding nature (such as so-called 'imaginary numbers').  Mathematics is intimately connected with our world and ourselves in ways that we do not fully understand.  

Mathematical cognition is a subfield of Psychology that studies how we learn about quantity, numbers and numerical reasoning.  In this course, we will take an interdisciplinary approach to mathematical cognition, including topics from history and philosophy of mathematics, developmental, comparative, experimental and educational psychology, biology, neuroscience, and computational modelling, and aesthetics.  Our goal is to reach a new understanding of the mathematical nature of the mind, and how psychological intuitions provide the basis for mathematics.  

Note:  This is a Psychology paper - no prior coursework in mathematics (beyond basic school-level algebra) is assumed or required!