Page 7 - Professorial Lecture - Prof Kasanda

with the environment and with one another, in the solving of practical
problems and the human desire to transcend matters of simple survival…”
(p. 1). “It is a subject without a knower” (Rowland, 2007, p. 101) and as
such no one can claim to have monopoly of the mathematical knowledge.
A simple example shows how we interact with mathematics in our daily
lives. We use or call upon our Mathematics knowledge though
rudimentary when we decide which item to purchase in a supermarket or
the time it will take for us to travel from one town to the other or the
money we will need to put a full tank of diesel or unleaded petrol in our
car to travel to town B. An old lady in the most furthest rural Namibia uses
mathematics when she sits down to plan how much of the pension money
she will use to buy food, and how much to set aside until the next
“payday”, estimating the speed of a car as we cross a street, or climbing
on a chair to get to the cookie jar. The mathematics we use might be
simple or complex depending on the situation. In all cases Mathematics is
used either consciously or unconsciously.

Ernest (1971) indicates that there are two main views of the nature of
mathematics knowledge, absolutist (Platonist) and fallibilist. He notes that
absolutists believe that “mathematical truth is absolutely certain, (and)
that mathematics is the one and perhaps the only realm of certain,
unquestionable and objective knowledge” (p. 3). On the other hand,
fallibilists view mathematical truth as “corrigible, and can never be
regarded as being above revision and correction” (p. 3). This view is that
since mathematics is “man-made” it cannot be an absolute truth. Siegel
and Borasi (1996) supporting the fallibilist view of mathematics knowledge
note that:

…mathematical results can only be sanctioned by the
mathematical community of the time on the basis of existing
knowledge and evidence as well as agreed upon criteria… The
history of mathematics has provided some notable examples of

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