Da literatura sobre a prova rigorosa em Educação Matemática: Um levantamento

Abstract

In this paper, we examine some materials available on the rigorous proof. It constitutes our pre-reflexive stage, the still little elaborate and obscure data which our doctoral thesis tried to enlighten. The articles and books we examine bring forth aspects which provide Mathematics with means to turn itself into a deductive hypothetical science, and although it is possible to point out some examples, previous to Euclid, of solid arguments to consubstantiate mathematical propositions, we can detect that it was with the geometrician from Megara that an initial picture of rigor in the proofs emerges. Many texts present us a certain "archeology" allowing us to trace the beginning of a route which, heading out by the need for a clarification of the meaning of "having rigor", keeps on bringing social aspects proper to the activity of proving things which is executed in the medium of professional Mathematics. The route of the review of the literature ends at the present time when we focus on the still polemical question of the use of computer science in the domain of the rigorous proofs. In general terms, some constitutive elements can be drawn out from the material under analysis, which are presented as a possible conclusion.