Elizabeth Spelke

The Michigan State University
Cognitive Science Program presents

Harvard University

Natural number and natural geometry

April 21, 2008 - 5:30 pm
Room 118, Psychology Building

Abstract:

For millenia, philosophers and other students of nature have proposed that two abstract, mathematical systems stand at the foundations of human thinking: the system that generates the positive integers ("natural number") and the system that generates the properties and relationships of Euclidean geometry ("natural geometry"). Each of these systems has been proposed either to be innate and accessible through processes of recollection or reflection, or learned on the basis of general-purpose associative mechanisms. Recently, research on human infants and young children has begun to cast doubt on both these proposals and support a third. In my talk, I will review some of the relevant evidence and offer a substantive suggestion concerning the origins of both these systems. Many of the components of positive integer concepts and of Euclidean geometric concepts arise independently of learning and are embodied in distinct systems of core knowledge. No core knowledge system, however, has the full power of either of these mathematical systems. Natural number and natural geometry therefore are the first explicit systems that young children build upon their foundational systems of core knowledge.