Book Review of Dr. Eric Vandendriessche's String figures as Mathematics? An anthropological approach to string figure-making in oral tradition societies
Review (Faculty180)
Eric Vandendriessche takes readers on a wonderful journey exploring string
figures. Vandendriessche holds a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of sciences from Paris
Diderot University. Dr. Vandendriessche’s ethnomathematics research extensively,
approaching exhaustively, explores the historical and current string figure engagement of
peoples from around the globe. When D’Ambrosio (1985) offered up his definition of
ethnomathematics, he included “codes and jargons.” The codes and jargon that
Vandendriessche brings to our attention, both from the past and his creations, reveals
an original scholarship to an area thatearly mathematics explored as a “recreation.”
Vandendriessche reveals that the mathematician Ian Stewart (1997) “claims that the
description and mathematical characterization of string figure-making is still an open
issue and could be a challenge to contemporary mathematicians” (cited in
Vandendriessche, 2015, p. 5). Engaging a mathematical lens in 1911, Walter Ball is
credited as the first mathematician to shown an interest in string figures (Vandendriessche, p. 67).
