The collection of papers in this anthology represents what may be a broad exploration of the
role of philosophical inquiry in the classroom and in mathematics teacher education a topos
characterized by multiple intersecting themes all of which converge on a central question:
what is the role of mathematics in the construction of the realities we live by and could that
role be different if we became aware of its invisible power? In the age of the Anthropocene -
an era in which technological intervention plays an ever more central role in the way we build
develop and attempt to maintain our increasingly fragile and risk-prone human and natural world
what are the implications of the hegemonic epistemic status of mathematics in those processes?
Does mathematics define the conditions of possibility of all knowledge whether expressed in a
theory or silently invested in a practice? Does or can mathematics and its presumed
value-neutrality serve to limit constrain suppress and even preclude other perhaps more
valuable forms of knowledge? Alternatively can philosophical dialogue about mathematics serve
to clarify unmask reframe and recreate our understanding of mathematics and its symbolic
power in the human and material world and act as an emancipatory form of knowledge in culture
and society? What would such dialogues look like in the mathematics classroom? The papers in
this volume address these questions in various contexts and registers and provide prospective
and in-service teachers with compelling and suggestive ways of responding to them. A must-read
for math educators everywhere. Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy Associate Professor of Mathematics
Education City University of New York USA. Eva Marsal Professor of Philosophy University of
Education Karlsruhe Germany & University of Warsaw Poland.
