Description:
Applies contemporary rhetorical analysis to mathematical discourse, calling into question the commonly held view that math equals truth. Explores how mathematical innovation has historically relied on rhetorical practices of making meaning, such as analogy, metaphor, and invention.
Brief description: G. Mitchell Reyes is Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at Lewis and Clark College. He is coeditor of Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age and Arguing with Numbers: The Intersections of Rhetoric and Mathematics, the latter also published by Penn State University Press.
Review Quotes:
"Reyes's knowledge of and engagement with mathematics are breathtaking in scope. The Evolution of Mathematics is rhetorically engaging as it winds its way through the rabbit hole of mathematical philosophy, history, and technological innovation. Mathematicians will learn about the stakes of their invention and translation practices while rhetoricians will find yet another plane within which rhetoric functions and can be engaged and assessed."
--Catherine Chaput, author of Inside the Teaching Machine: Rhetoric and the Globalization of the U.S. Public Research University