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Books > Science & Mathematics > Mathematics > Philosophy of mathematics
During the first few decades of the twentieth century, philosophers
and mathematicians mounted a sustained effort to clarify the nature
of mathematics. This led to considerable discord, even enmity, and
yielded fascinating and fruitful work of both a mathematical and a
philosophical nature. It was one of the most exhilarating
intellectual adventures of the century, pursued at an
extraordinarily high level of acuity and imagination. Its legacy
principally consists of three original and finely articulated
programs that seek to view mathematics in the proper light:
logicism, intuitionism, and finitism. Each is notable for its
symbiotic melding together of philosophical vision and mathematical
work: the philosophical ideas are given their substance by specific
mathematical developments, which are in turn given their point by
philosophical reflection. This book provides an accessible, critical introduction to these
three projects as it describes and investigates both their
philosophical and their mathematical components. Solutions manual is available upon request.
This edited collection is the first of its kind to explore the view called perspectivism in philosophy of science. The book brings together an array of essays that reflect on the methodological promises and scientific challenges of perspectivism in a variety of fields such as physics, biology, cognitive neuroscience, and cancer research, just as a few examples. What are the advantages of using a plurality of perspectives in a given scientific field and for interdisciplinary research? Can different perspectives be integrated? What is the relation between perspectivism, pluralism, and pragmatism? These ten new essays by top scholars in the field offer a polyphonic journey towards understanding the view called 'perspectivism' and its relevance to science.
One of the only volumes that brings the humanities, social sciences and even the natural sciences under one remit to look at how they can be researched in an integrated and useful way, with policy and real world implications in terms of how we relate in and to the world. Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity have been around for a long time, but as as we move through a digital age they are becoming more and more important and interesting to the scholarly community and beyond. There is nothing on the market that pulls all of these subjects across disciplines together and works out a framework to construct the analysis in a way that asks and answers useful questions.
This book explores and articulates the concepts of the continuous and the infinitesimal from two points of view: the philosophical and the mathematical. The first section covers the history of these ideas in philosophy. Chapter one, entitled 'The continuous and the discrete in Ancient Greece, the Orient and the European Middle Ages,' reviews the work of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and other Ancient Greeks; the elements of early Chinese, Indian and Islamic thought; and early Europeans including Henry of Harclay, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Thomas Bradwardine and Nicolas Oreme. The second chapter of the book covers European thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, Arnauld, Fermat, and more. Chapter three, 'The age of continuity,' discusses eighteenth century mathematicians including Euler and Carnot, and philosophers, among them Hume, Kant and Hegel. Examining the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fourth chapter describes the reduction of the continuous to the discrete, citing the contributions of Bolzano, Cauchy and Reimann. Part one of the book concludes with a chapter on divergent conceptions of the continuum, with the work of nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophers and mathematicians, including Veronese, Poincare, Brouwer, and Weyl. Part two of this book covers contemporary mathematics, discussing topology and manifolds, categories, and functors, Grothendieck topologies, sheaves, and elementary topoi. Among the theories presented in detail are non-standard analysis, constructive and intuitionist analysis, and smooth infinitesimal analysis/synthetic differential geometry. No other book so thoroughly covers the history and development of the concepts of the continuous and the infinitesimal.
Reissuing five works originally published between 1937 and 1991, this collection contains books addressing the subject of time, from a mostly philosophic point of view but also of interest to those in the science and mathematics worlds. These texts are brought back into print in this small set of works addressing how we think about time, the history of the philosophy of time, the measurement of time, theories of relativity and discussions of the wider thinking about time and space, among other aspects. One volume is a thorough bibliography collating references on the subject of time across many disciplines.
Originally published in 1976. This comprehensive study discusses in detail the philosophical, mathematical, physical, logical and theological aspects of our understanding of time and space. The text examines first the many different definitions of time that have been offered, beginning with some of the puzzles arising from our awareness of the passage of time and shows how time can be understood as the concomitant of consciousness. In considering time as the dimension of change, the author obtains a transcendental derivation of the concept of space, and shows why there has to be only one dimension of time and three of space, and why Kant was not altogether misguided in believing the space of our ordinary experience to be Euclidean. The concept of space-time is then discussed, including Lorentz transformations, and in an examination of the applications of tense logic the author discusses the traditional difficulties encountered in arguments for fatalism. In the final sections he discusses eternity and the beginning and end of the universe. The book includes sections on the continuity of space and time, on the directedness of time, on the differences between classical mechanics and the Special and General theories of relativity, on the measurement of time, on the apparent slowing down of moving clocks, and on time and probability.
Originally published in 1980. What is time? How is its structure determined? The enduring controversy about the nature and structure of time has traditionally been a diametrical argument between those who see time as a container into which events are placed, and those for whom time cannot exist without events. This controversy between the absolutist and the relativist theories of time is a central theme of this study. The author's impressive arguments provide grounds for rejecting both these theories, firstly by establishing that 'empty' time is possible, and secondly by showing, through a discussion of the structure of time which involves considering whether time might be cyclical, branching, beginning or non-beginning, that the absolutist theory of time is untenable. This book then advances two new theories, and succeeds in shifting the traditional debate about time to a consideration of time as a theoretical structure and as a theoretical framework.
How we reason with mathematical ideas continues to be a fascinating
and challenging topic of research--particularly with the rapid and
diverse developments in the field of cognitive science that have
taken place in recent years. Because it draws on multiple
disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, computer science,
linguistics, and anthropology, cognitive science provides rich
scope for addressing issues that are at the core of mathematical
learning.
How we reason with mathematical ideas continues to be a fascinating
and challenging topic of research--particularly with the rapid and
diverse developments in the field of cognitive science that have
taken place in recent years. Because it draws on multiple
disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, computer science,
linguistics, and anthropology, cognitive science provides rich
scope for addressing issues that are at the core of mathematical
learning.
This book contributes towards the literature in the field of mathematics education, specifically on aspects of empowering learners of mathematics. The book, comprising eighteen chapters, written by renowned researchers in mathematics education, provides readers with approaches and applicable classroom strategies to empower learners of mathematics.The chapters in the book can be classified into four sections. The four sections focus on how learners could be empowered in their learning, cognitive and affective processes, through mathematical content, purposefully designed mathematical tasks, whilst developing 21st century competencies.
Russell's first book on philosophy and a fascinating insight into his early thinking A classic in the history and philosophy of mathematics and logic by one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Michael Potter, a renowned expert on analytic philosophy
Chemists, working with only mortars and pestles, could not get very
far unless they had mathematical models to explain what was
happening "inside" of their elements of experience -- an example of
what could be termed mathematical learning.
Why do some children seem to learn mathematics easily and others
slave away at it, learning it only with great effort and apparent
pain? Why are some people good at algebra but terrible at geometry?
How can people who successfully run a business as adults have been
failures at math in school? How come some professional
mathematicians suffer terribly when trying to balance a checkbook?
And why do school children in the United States perform so dismally
in international comparisons? These are the kinds of real questions
the editors set out to answer, or at least address, in editing this
book on mathematical thinking. Their goal was to seek a diversity
of contributors representing multiple viewpoints whose expertise
might converge on the answers to these and other pressing and
interesting questions regarding this subject.
This book is meant as a part of the larger contemporary philosophical project of naturalizing logico-mathematical knowledge, and addresses the key question that motivates most of the work in this field: What is philosophically relevant about the nature of logico-mathematical knowledge in recent research in psychology and cognitive science? The question about this distinctive kind of knowledge is rooted in Plato's dialogues, and virtually all major philosophers have expressed interest in it. The essays in this collection tackle this important philosophical query from the perspective of the modern sciences of cognition, namely cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Naturalizing Logico-Mathematical Knowledge contributes to consolidating a new, emerging direction in the philosophy of mathematics, which, while keeping the traditional concerns of this sub-discipline in sight, aims to engage with them in a scientifically-informed manner. A subsequent aim is to signal the philosophers' willingness to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the community of cognitive scientists and psychologists by examining their methods and interpretive strategies.
In Hidden Questions, Clinical Musings, M. Robert Gardner chronicles an odyssey of self-discovery that has taken him beneath and beyond the categoies and conventions of traditional psychoanalysis. His essays offer a vision of psychoanalytic inquiry that blends art and science, a vision in which the subtly intertwining not-quite-conscious questions of analysand and analyst, gradually discerned, open to ever-widening vistas of shared meaning. Gardner is wonderfully illuminating in exploring the associations, images, and dreams that have fueled his own analytic inquiries, but he is no less compelling in writing about the different perceptual modalities and endlessly variegated strategies that can be summoned to bring hidden questions to light. This masterfully assembled collection exemplifies the lived experience of psychoanalysis of one of its most gifted and reflective practitioners. In his vivid depictions of analysis oscillating between the poles of art and science, word and image, inquiry and self-inquiry, Gardner offers precious insights into tensions that are basic to the analytic endeavor. Evincing rare virtuosity of form and content, these essays are evocative clinical gems, radiating the humility, gentle skepticism, and abiding wonder of this lifelong self-inquirer. Gardner's most uncommon musings are a gift to the reader.
Wittgenstein was centrally concerned with the puzzling nature of the mind, mathematics, morality and modality. He also developed innovative views about the status and methodology of philosophy and was explicitly opposed to crudely "scientistic" worldviews. His later thought has thus often been understood as elaborating a nuanced form of naturalism appealing to such notions as "form of life", "primitive reactions", "natural history", "general facts of nature" and "common behaviour of mankind". And yet, Wittgenstein is strangely absent from much of the contemporary literature on naturalism and naturalising projects. This is the first collection of essays to focus explicitly on the relationship between Wittgenstein and naturalism. The volume is divided into four sections, each of which addresses a different aspect of naturalism and its relation to Wittgenstein's thought. The first section considers how naturalism could or should be understood. The second section deals with some of the main problematic domains-consciousness, meaning, mathematics-that philosophers have typically sought to naturalise. The third section explores ways in which the conceptual nature of human life might be continuous in important respects with animals. The final section is concerned with the naturalistic status and methodology of philosophy itself. This book thus casts a fresh light on many classical philosophical issues and brings Wittgensteinian ideas to bear on a number of current debates-for example experimental philosophy, neo-pragmatism and animal cognition/ethics-in which naturalism is playing a central role.
This book grew out of a five-year collaboration between groups of
American and German mathematics educators. The central issue
addressed accounting for the messiness and complexity of
mathematics learning and teaching as it occurs in classroom
situations. The individual chapters are based on the view that
psychological and sociological perspectives each tell half of a
good story. To unify these concepts requires a combined approach
that takes individual students' mathematical activity seriously
while simultaneously seeing their activity as necessarily socially
situated. Throughout their collaboration, the chapter authors
shared a single set of video recordings and transcripts made in an
American elementary classroom where instruction was generally
compatible with recent reform recommendations. As a consequence,
the book is much more than a compendium of loosely related papers.
Rarely has the history and philosophy of mathematics been written about by mathematicians, and the analysis of mathematical texts themselves has been an area almost entirely unexplored. "Figures of Thought" looks at ways in which mathematical works can be read as texts and demonstrates that such readings provide a rich source of philosophical issues regarding mathematics: issues which traditional approaches to the history and philosophy of mathematics have neglected. David Reed offers the first sustained and critical attempt to find a consistent argument or narrative thread in mathematical texts. He selects mathematicians from a range of historical periods and compares their approaches to organizing and arguing texts, using an extended commentary of Euclid's "Elements" as a central structuring framework. In doing so, he develops new interpretations of mathematicians' work throughout history, from Descartes to Grothendieck and traces the implications of such an approach for the understanding of the history and development of mathematics.
This volume presents Wittgenstein's views on mathematics, which he progressively elaborated during a lifetime's reflections on the subject. Divided into three parts, it corresponds to the three distinct phases in the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. The first part is devoted to the "Tractatus" and contains a systematic construction of the representation of arithmetic in logical operations. The second part is concerned with the so-called "intermediate phase" (1929-33), which is characterized by strong verification and by a conception of the relation between the particular and the general in mathematics which forms the basis of Wittgenstein's later reflections on rule-following. The final section deals with the writings on mathematics in the decade 1934-44. The main themes of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mathematics are understood as consequences of his considerations of rule-following.
Originally published in 1949. This meticulously researched book presents a comprehensive outline and discussion of Aristotle's mathematics with the author's translations of the greek. To Aristotle, mathematics was one of the three theoretical sciences, the others being theology and the philosophy of nature (physics). Arranged thematically, this book considers his thinking in relation to the other sciences and looks into such specifics as squaring of the circle, syllogism, parallels, incommensurability of the diagonal, angles, universal proof, gnomons, infinity, agelessness of the universe, surface of water, meteorology, metaphysics and mechanics such as levers, rudders, wedges, wheels and inertia. The last few short chapters address 'problems' that Aristotle posed but couldn't answer, related ethics issues and a summary of some short treatises that only briefly touch on mathematics.
This volume of essays tackles the main problem that arises when considering an epistemology for mathematics, the nature and sources of mathematical justification. Focusing both on particular and general issues, the essays from leading philosophers of mathematics raise important issues for our current understanding of mathematics. Is mathematical justification "a priori" or "a posteriori"? What role, if any, does logic play in mathematical reasoning or inference? And how epistemologically important is the formalizability of proof? The companion volume "Proof, Knowledge and Formalization" is also available from Routledge. Contributors include Michael Detlefsen, Michael D. Resnik, Stewart Shapiro, Mark Steiner, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Shelley Stillwell, William J. Tait and Steven J. Wagner. This book should be of interest to advanced students and lecturers of philosophy of logic and maths.
Nature provides many examples of physical systems that are
described by deterministic equations of motion, but that
nevertheless exhibit nonpredictable behavior. The detailed
description of turbulent motions remains perhaps the outstanding
unsolved problem of classical physics. In recent years, however, a
new theory has been formulated that succeeds in making quantitative
predictions describing certain transitions to turbulence. Its
significance lies in its possible application to large classes
(often very dissimilar) of nonlinear systems.
Resonance examines some building blocks of epistemology as a prelude to the careful analysis of the foundations of probability. The concept of resonance is introduced to shed light on the philosophical problems of induction, consciousness, intelligence and free will. The same concept is later applied to provide support for a new philosophical theory of probability.Although based on existing ideas and theories, the epistemological concept of resonance is investigated for the first time in this book. The best-known philosophical theories of probability, frequency and subjective, are shown to be unrealistic and dissociated from the two main branches of statistics: frequency statistics and Bayesian statistics.Written in an accessible style, this book can be enjoyed by philosophers, statisticians and mathematicians, and also by anyone looking to expand their understanding of the disciplines of epistemology and probability. |
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