Towards an ecological mathematics
dc.contributor.author | Unnithan Kumar, S | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2024-03-26T12:13:41Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2024-03-22 | |
dc.date.updated | 2024-03-26T11:12:52Z | |
dc.description.abstract | Mathematics plays a fundamental role in ecological research, yet its uses remain strikingly separate from advances in the environmental social sciences and humanities. In this paper, I work to address this impasse and outline the motivation and scope for an ‘ecological mathematics’, an approach to doing mathematics in environmental research which foregrounds relationship, embodiment and human difference. I begin by tracing the historical emergence of mathematics in ecology, noting how life processes have been conceptualised in a way which forces them to fit the ideals of mathematical models transplanted from the physical sciences. I then investigate the cultural factors shaping the evolution of mathematical thought, eliciting a malleability in how mathematical knowledge relates to the more-than-human world. This provides a place from which to rethink the role of abstraction in ecological thought, and develop mathematical methods grounded in ecological concepts. Drawing on ethnographic and perceptual accounts of space and time, I work with topological concepts from both mathematics and the social sciences to suggest a new correspondence between these subjects, elaborating a way of employing mathematical techniques which enliven, rather than deaden, the ecologies under study. The paper concludes with important philosophical clarifications to the approach of an ecological mathematics. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Published online 22 March 2024 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1177/03080188241232766 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/135627 | |
dc.identifier | ORCID: 0000-0002-4747-3820 (Unnithan Kumar, Siddharth) | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | SAGE Publications / Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2024. open access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). | en_GB |
dc.subject | Mathematics | en_GB |
dc.subject | ecology | en_GB |
dc.subject | geography | en_GB |
dc.subject | anthropology | en_GB |
dc.subject | more-than-human | en_GB |
dc.subject | topology | en_GB |
dc.subject | philosophy | en_GB |
dc.subject | abstraction | en_GB |
dc.subject | space and time | en_GB |
dc.subject | relationship | en_GB |
dc.title | Towards an ecological mathematics | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2024-03-26T12:13:41Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0308-0188 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available on open access from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.identifier.eissn | 1743-2790 | |
dc.identifier.journal | Interdisciplinary Science Reviews | en_GB |
dc.relation.ispartof | Interdisciplinary Science Reviews | |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ | en_GB |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2024-03-22 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2024-03-26T11:59:33Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | VoR | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2024-03-26T12:13:46Z | |
refterms.panel | B | en_GB |
refterms.dateFirstOnline | 2024-03-22 |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © The Author(s) 2024. open access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).