Mathematics and Literature: Perspectives for interdisciplinary classroom pedagogy

Abstract: Mathematics and literature have an ancient affinity as seen in the writings of the Greek philosophers, medieval theologians and natural philosophers of the post Renaissance period. Many of these writings indicate a pragmatic style of doing mathematics as opposed to the essentialist nature conveyed by school curricula today. Given the modern Renaissance of sorts as seen in the explosion of expository literature in mathematics/science, we explore the use of literature in the teaching and learning of mathematics. In particular, we explore (1) the use of the genre of “modern ” mathematics fiction such as Flatland and Flatterland for the purpose of introducing advanced mathematical ideas and to allow the exploration of philosophical questions on the nature of mathematics; and (2) The use of literary texts which contain mathematics in it in conjunction with the use of a special software called MATEX which connects short literary texts and mathematical learning