MATHEMATICAL MODELING AND THE ASSIGNMENT OF SENSES IN THE FIRST SCHOOL YEARS

Abstract

This paper aims to point out philosophical reflections about mathematical modelling and its role in attributing meanings to the facts of the world and, in particular, to mathematical language. Our reflections take as their north elements of Wittgenstein’s philosophy about language, specifically the idea of use present in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Through Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language and Arley Ramos Moreno’s Epistemology of Use, a conceptual discussion is brought to the agenda in order to put into debate the constitution of meaning from the development of mathematical modelling activities. The methodological course interweaves elements of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Moreno’s epistemology of use in the analysis of different mathematical modelling practices since Child Education. Based on the perspectives cast on mathematical modelling activities, regarding the use, manipulation or construction of mathematical models, the results point to the possibilities of mathematical formalization in the first school years; for the role of language instruments such as ostensive gestures and naming that organize the introduction of students in the first school years to the different language games of mathematics; for the manipulation and use of mathematical models regarding concepts associated with geometry, numbering, ordering, classification, proportionality, measurements, information processing, addition and multiplication.