Mathematics Culture And Human Civilization

Culture is one of the most widely used words, and has a broadmeaning. Overhundreds of years, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians and linguiststry to definite culture from their own point of view but without a recognizedconclusion. At present, the classical definition of culture that can be acceptedincultural anthropology and sociology comes from Edwin Tylor. He defined it thus:’Culture or civilization...is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,morals, law, custom and anyother capabilities and habits acquired by man as amember of society. Scholars of China agree that culture is the sum of human materialcivilization and spiritual civilization.Culture is the accumulation of knowledge and life experience. It is a complexwhich has subculture systems and spread with history. Mathematics is an unnaturalproduct created by human. It includes human knowledge, consciousness andexperience, and develops in spread, influenced and accommodated. Mathematicsshould be called culture because it has all characteristics of culture. In1960’s, Westernscholars offered the opinion of mathematics culture and advocated new opinion forresearching of philosophy of mathematics. In the past20years, mathematicians inChina raised concerns about the study of mathematics culture and researching inrelevant fields of mathematics culture is conducted.According to the study of modern mathematics, mathematics culture is adynamical system with special functions which takes mathematical sciences as a coreand culture field including thought, spirit, methods and content of mathematics as acomponent. The basic essences of mathematical culture are mathematics and variouscultural objects associated with mathematics. As research progressed, the cultureattributes of mathematics such as abstraction, certainty, inheritance, simplicity, unityand culture character such as penetration, transmission, applicability, foreseeability and so on are developed and the artistry of mathematics is attract the eyeballs. Thestudy of mathematical culture shows that the process of origin, development,perfection and application of mathematics influenced human not only in attitude,thought and ideology, but also in the spirit of exploration showed in the cognitiveprocess.Logic thinking is peculiar spiritual activity to mankind and the reason of human tothink and the ability of human logic thinking is related to mathematics tightly.Actually, the process of logic thinking is the process of deducting and reasoning, andthe premise of deducting and reasoning is that concepts would be abstracted fromentities in human consciousness firstly. As the birth of civilization and mathematics,human had already known numbers and counting. The forming of abstract concepts ofnumbers is the first step of logic thinking, and the logical relationships of numbers aremore meaningful. When people established logical relationships between concepts ofnumbers and confirmed the reliability of these logical relationships, the process oflogic thinking was began. In that sense, logic thinking began from mathematics andthe ability of logic was established from mathematics field.After the process of logic was completed, the basic spirit of mathematics came tosearching mathematics truth which led people focusing on universality andinevitability. Euclidean said “There is no easy way for the King in geometry”;Aristotle said “In one sense, searching of truth is difficult, but simple in a differentsense”. It follows that mathematicians and philosophers are in agreement on this issue.Everyone is equal before the truth, either mathematics truth or moral truth. The basictendency of human thought focuses on universality and inevitability. People foundthat the reasons of change of objective world should be explained by objective worlditself but not by the agency of Providence simple. Descartes, famous thinker inmodern time of western, tried to establish a system of philosophy which has certaintyand reliability as mathematics by deducting and reasoning on the field of philosophyand got philosophy back to the Age of Reason. Consequently, rationalism which hadgreat effect on Western in modern time is the reason of that mathematics spirit enters into the field of thought and culture.In past research on history of mathematics and culture, people paid moreattention on the relationship between mathematics and science but not on history ofmathematics and thought. In fact, the development of mathematics is well correlatedwith the development of human thought. People shake off the yoke of superstitiousreligion and improved life style by acquiring knowledge. The popularized of rationalspirit which comes from mathematics is the process of getting rational attitude of lifeand creating new life.Truth was always born with frustration and the way of getting truth was usuallyrough. Mathematics history shows to us not only the history of mathematics showsbut also the past that human searching hard for truth. The desire of people for truthand surpass their own, the challenge to the final extent of their intelligence all can belearned from mathematics history.When it comes to cultural quality, most people think that it means knowledgeand character of social sciences but seldom discuss of natural sciences especially ofmathematics. We think that mathematical quality is one of the most important inspectof cultural quality.Mathematical quality is basic quality which people get from the process oflearning mathematics, and it acts as ability and habit to thing logically, rationalattitude to life, love for truth and good personal characters. For every member of thesociety, maybe they could not find answers of serious mathematical problems andthey needn’t have strong mathematical ability, they have got rather precious things oflife if only they believe the basic spirit of mathematics that respecting truth andobjectivity, could solve the problems rationally and be good at simplifyingcomplicated situations of the real world reasonably. It means that in daily life, goodthinking modes and attitude of life are more important than mathematical skills. Inthis sense, the importance of mathematics culture education is self-evident. Forimproving cultural quality of people, we should readjust the teaching aim andprogram of mathematics of colleges, make the teaching focuses on from ability only to both ability and quality. It will be a reliable way to improve citizen’s quality bymathematics teaching of colleges.The current curricular structure of colleges in our country which pays moreattention to mathematical skills but ignores mathematics culture is not adapted to therequirements to improve citizen’s quality, so it is imperative to popularize education ofmathematics culture. But there are still some problems should be solved in short timesuch as making mathematics culture into mathematics teaching, training a team whichcould be fit for the need of mathematics culture teaching, constructing teachingmaterials rapidly and so on.The study of mathematics culture is still on its way, but the feedback of themathematics culture teaching will last on a long time. We try to find out the cultureattributes of mathematics from our understanding of mathematics and culture, anddesire to make our contribution to the study of mathematics culture and mathematicseducation.