Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it. So is there some scientific study backing up the claim that all these people could easily learn it or are we just making it up because its a nice egalitarian thesis for a math popularization book?

>A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it

Any healthy/able individual could learn to deadlift twice their bodyweight with sufficient training, but the vast majority of people never reach this basic fitness milestone, because they don't put any time into achieving it. There's a very large gap between what people are capable of theoretically and what they achieve in practice.

> So is there some scientific study backing up the claim that all these people could easily learn it [emphasis added]

Who said it would be easy?

That certain countries both now and in the past have had significantly higher mathematical ability among the general population and much higher proportions going on to further study suggests that ability isn’t innate but that people don’t choose it. In the Soviet Union more time was spent teaching mathematics and a whole culture developed around mathematics being fun.

I do not think that Bessis's argument is entirely "made up"

We are not really taught (thought) to think, we are taught to memorize. Until one actually tries to think, you really can't tell if they're able to do it.