Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being

The two authorsLakoff, a linguist and Nunez, a psychologistpurport to introduce a new field of study, i.e. "mathematical idea analysis", with this book. By "mathematical idea analysis", they mean to give a scientifically plausible account of mathematical concepts using the apparatus of cognitive science. This approach is meant to be a contribution to academics and possibly education as it helps to illuminate how we cognitise mathematical concepts, which are supposedly undecipherable and abstruse to laymen. The analysis of mathematical ideas, the authors claim, cannot be done within mathematics, for even metamathematicsrecursive theory, model theory, set theory, higherorder logic still requires mathematical idea analysis in itself! Formalism, by its very nature, voids symbols of their meanings and thus cognition is required to imbue meaning. Thus, there is a need for this new field, in which the authors, if successful, would become pioneers.