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APPLIED MATHEMATICS AS SOCIAL CONTRACT Philip. J. Davis Brown University Philip_Davis(at)brown.edu ABSTRACT The author takes the position that mathematical education must redefine its goals so as to create a citizenry with sufficient knowledge to provide social backpressure on future mathematizations. This can be accomplished by increasing the part of mathematical education that is devoted to the description and interpretation of the processes of mathematization and by allowing the technicalities of the formal operations within mathematics itself to be deemphasized or automated out by computer. 1. This mathematized world As compared to the medieval world or the world of antiquity, today’s world is characterized as being scientific, technological, rational and mathematized. By “rational” I mean that by an application of reason or of the formalized versions of reason found in mathematics, one attempts to understand the world and control the world. By “mathematized”, I shall mean the employment of mathematical ideas or constructs, either in their theoretical form or in computer manifestations, to organize, to describe, to regulate and to foster our human activities. By adding the suffix “ized”, I want to emphasize that it is humans who, consciously or unconsciously; are putting the mathematizations into place and who are affected by them. It is of vital importance to give some account of mathematics as a human institution, to arrive at an understanding of its operation and at a philosophy consonant with our experience with it, and on this basis to make recommendations for future mathematical education. The pace of mathematization of the world has been accelerating. It makes an interesting exercise for young students to count how many numbers are found on the front page of the daily paper. The mere number of numbers is surprising, as well as the diversity and depth of the mathematics that underlies the numbers; and if one turns to the financial pages or the s