Intellectual Humility in Mathematics

In this talk I wish to defend the claim that intellectual humility can aide mathematical creativity. This claim is really two claims in disguise. First, I say something theoretical about humility. I argue that intellectual humility has points of interaction with creativity. This has bearing on the accounts, definitions or conceptual analyses we give of intellectual humility. The second claim is about story-telling. I claim that investigating certain cases in terms of intellectual humility helps us to better explain and understand these cases. This is thus a claim about story-telling: to tell a story through the lenses of intellectual humility may make the story more accessible to us. It is a principal aim of this talk to make visible what this may mean.