AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Despite the increasing significance of the notion of aesthetic education to pedagogic theory and aesthetics, it has yet to be seriously considered in relation to mathematical education. This gap in the literature is all the more pressing given that mathematical modelling and reasoning underpin the technology and sciences required to overcome the climate crisis. Since the German tradition of aesthetics has often associated mathematics with instrumentality, mathematical beauty has been implicitly considered a contradictio in terminis. By contrast, in this essay I will argue that Bernard Bolzano’s work—a rare example of a mathematician who writes about aesthetics—opens up the aesthetic dimension of mathematical experience. Moreover, I will argue that the potential of aesthetic education—both as a response to Plato’s accusation against the poets and as a practical theory of the social function of art—will not be fully realised until the German aesthetic tradition has adequately reckoned with mathematical beauty. Through investigating this previously unexplored dialogue between the sciences and humanities, I hope to demonstrate the expansive possibilities of this enriched notion of aesthetic education for future scholarship in pedagogy, aesthetics, the history of German philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics.