January 2019 – Jeroen Bouterse

Why Teach Math? Two Voices From The 1920s

New 3QD-column: Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa and Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis on intuition and abstract thought in math class.

“Am I ever going to use this later?” As a math teacher, I seem to be getting this question about once a month (which is actually less frequently than I would have predicted). It is asked with varying degrees of openness to the idea that a satisfying reply is even conceivable, but almost invariably by students who are probably justified in believing that their tertiary education or future career is going to involve preciously few linear equations indeed.

See here.

Atheism and Historical Awareness

My new 3QD-column (published last week) discusses atheism and historical awareness, departing from John Gray’s Seven Types of Atheism.

It is simultaneously awkward and exciting to read about your own consciously and responsibly adopted beliefs as something to be anatomized. It is also something atheists are not always much disposed to. On the contrary, perhaps: many forms of atheism present themselves as a consequence of free thought, of emancipation from tradition. The internal logic of their arguments prescribes that while religious beliefs, being non-rational, are in need of cultural or psychological explanation, atheism is really just what you will gravitate towards once you finally start thinking. One question here will be whether this is necessarily the case.

More here.