Mateusz Hohol’s book published by Routledge

Routledge, one of the most prominent scientific publishers of the world, and at the same time one of the best rated by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, published a book entitled „Foundations of geometric cognition” by Dr. Mateusz Hohol. The author is Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Jagiellonian University.

The cognitive foundations of geometry have puzzled academics for a long time, and even today are mostly unknown to many scholars, including mathematical cognition researchers.

„Foundations of geometric cognition” shows that basic geometric skills are deeply hardwired in the visuospatial cognitive capacities of our brains, namely spatial navigation and object recognition. These capacities, shared with non-human animals and appearing in early stages of the human ontogeny, cannot, however, fully explain a uniquely human form of geometric cognition. In the book, Dr. Hohol argues that Euclidean geometry would not be possible without the human capacity to create and use abstract concepts, demonstrating how language and diagrams provide cognitive scaffolding for abstract geometric thinking, within a context of a Euclidean system of thought.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on research from diverse fields including psychology, cognitive science, and mathematics, this book is a must-read for cognitive psychologists and cognitive scientists of mathematics, alongside anyone interested in mathematical education or the philosophical and historical aspects of geometry.

More details are available on the website of Routledge, and an excerpt that involves the first chapter is available here for free (please click preview PDF there).

Bibliographic data:

Hohol, M. (2020). Foundations of geometric cognition. London-New York: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780429056291