Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics by Moritz Pasch

Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics by Moritz Pasch PDF Author: Stephen Pollard
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048194164
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Moritz Pasch (1843-1930) is justly celebrated as a key figure in the history of axiomatic geometry. Less well known are his contributions to other areas of foundational research. This volume features English translations of 14 papers Pasch published in the decade 1917-1926. In them, Pasch argues that geometry and, more surprisingly, number theory are branches of empirical science; he provides axioms for the combinatorial reasoning essential to Hilbert’s program of consistency proofs; he explores "implicit definition" (a generalization of definition by abstraction) and indicates how this technique yields an "empiricist" reconstruction of set theory; he argues that we cannot fully understand the logical structure of mathematics without clearly distinguishing between decidable and undecidable properties; he offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a master of axiomatics, surveying in detail the thought experiments he employed as he struggled to identify fundamental mathematical principles; and much more. This volume will: Give English speakers access to an important body of work from a turbulent and pivotal period in the history of mathematics, help us look beyond the familiar triad of formalism, intuitionism, and logicism, show how deeply we can see with the help of a guide determined to present fundamental mathematical ideas in ways that match our human capacities, will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in logic and the foundations of mathematics.

Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics by Moritz Pasch

Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics by Moritz Pasch PDF Author: Stephen Pollard
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048194164
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
Moritz Pasch (1843-1930) is justly celebrated as a key figure in the history of axiomatic geometry. Less well known are his contributions to other areas of foundational research. This volume features English translations of 14 papers Pasch published in the decade 1917-1926. In them, Pasch argues that geometry and, more surprisingly, number theory are branches of empirical science; he provides axioms for the combinatorial reasoning essential to Hilbert’s program of consistency proofs; he explores "implicit definition" (a generalization of definition by abstraction) and indicates how this technique yields an "empiricist" reconstruction of set theory; he argues that we cannot fully understand the logical structure of mathematics without clearly distinguishing between decidable and undecidable properties; he offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a master of axiomatics, surveying in detail the thought experiments he employed as he struggled to identify fundamental mathematical principles; and much more. This volume will: Give English speakers access to an important body of work from a turbulent and pivotal period in the history of mathematics, help us look beyond the familiar triad of formalism, intuitionism, and logicism, show how deeply we can see with the help of a guide determined to present fundamental mathematical ideas in ways that match our human capacities, will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in logic and the foundations of mathematics.

Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics by Moritz Pasch

Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics by Moritz Pasch PDF Author: Stephen Pollard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789048194179
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Moritz Pasch (1843-1930) is justly celebrated as a key figure in the history of axiomatic geometry. Less well known are his contributions to other areas of foundational research. This volume features English translations of 14 papers Pasch published in the decade 1917-1926. In them, Pasch argues that geometry and, more surprisingly, number theory are branches of empirical science; he provides axioms for the combinatorial reasoning essential to Hilbert's program of consistency proofs; he explores "implicit definition" (a generalization of definition by abstraction) and indicates how this technique yields an "empiricist" reconstruction of set theory; he argues that we cannot fully understand the logical structure of mathematics without clearly distinguishing between decidable and undecidable properties; he offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a master of axiomatics, surveying in detail the thought experiments he employed as he struggled to identify fundamental mathematical principles; and much more. This volume will: Give English speakers access to an important body of work from a turbulent and pivotal period in the history of mathematics. Help us look beyond the familiar triad of formalism, intuitionism, and logicism. Show how deeply we can see with the help of a guide determined to present fundamental mathematical ideas in ways that match our human capacities. The book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in logic and the foundations of mathematics.

The Prehistory of Mathematical Structuralism

The Prehistory of Mathematical Structuralism PDF Author: Erich H. Reck
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190641223
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
This edited volume explores the previously underacknowledged 'pre-history' of mathematical structuralism, showing that structuralism has deep roots in the history of modern mathematics. The contributors explore this history along two distinct but interconnected dimensions. First, they reconsider the methodological contributions of major figures in the history of mathematics. Second, they re-examine a range of philosophical reflections from mathematically-inclinded philosophers like Russell, Carnap, and Quine, whose work led to profound conclusions about logical, epistemological, and metaphysic.

Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice

Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice PDF Author: Uljana Feest
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110253615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Recent philosophy and history of science has seen a surge of interest in the role of concepts in scientific research. Scholars working in this new field focus on scientific concepts, rather than theories, as units of analysis and on the ways in which concepts are formed and used rather than on what they represent. They analyze what has traditionally been called the context of discovery, rather than (or in addition to) the context of justification. And they examine the dynamics of research rather than the status of the finished research results. This volume provides detailed case studies and general analyses to address questions raised by these points, such as: - Can concepts be clearly distinguished from the sets of beliefs we have about their referents? - What - if any - sense can be made of the separation between concepts and theories? - Can we distinguish between empirical and theoretical concepts? - Are there interesting similarities and differences between the role of concepts in the empirical sciences and in mathematics? - What underlying notion of investigative practice could be drawn on to explicate the role of concept in such practice? - From a philosophical point of view, is the distinction between discovery and justification a helpful frame of reference for inquiring into the dynamics of research? - From a historiographical point of view, does a focus on concepts face the danger of falling back into an old-fashioned history of ideas?

Epistemology, Knowledge and the Impact of Interaction

Epistemology, Knowledge and the Impact of Interaction PDF Author: Juan Redmond
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319265067
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
With this volume of the series Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science edited by S. Rahman et al. a challenging dialogue is being continued. The series’ first volume argued that one way to recover the connections between logic, philosophy of sciences, and sciences is to acknowledge the host of alternative logics which are currently being developed. The present volume focuses on four key themes. First of all, several chapters unpack the connection between knowledge and epistemology with particular focus on the notion of knowledge as resulting from interaction. Secondly, new epistemological perspectives on linguistics, the foundations of mathematics and logic, physics, biology and law are a subject of analysis. Thirdly, several chapters are dedicated to a discussion of Constructive Type Theory and more generally of the proof-theoretical notion of meaning.Finally, the book brings together studies on the epistemic role of abduction and argumentation theory, both linked to non-monotonic approaches to the dynamics of knowledge.

From Dedekind to Gödel

From Dedekind to Gödel PDF Author: Jaakko Hintikka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401584788
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
Discussions of the foundations of mathematics and their history are frequently restricted to logical issues in a narrow sense, or else to traditional problems of analytic philosophy. From Dedekind to Gödel: Essays on the Development of the Foundations of Mathematics illustrates the much greater variety of the actual developments in the foundations during the period covered. The viewpoints that serve this purpose included the foundational ideas of working mathematicians, such as Kronecker, Dedekind, Borel and the early Hilbert, and the development of notions like model and modelling, arbitrary function, completeness, and non-Archimedean structures. The philosophers discussed include not only the household names in logic, but also Husserl, Wittgenstein and Ramsey. Needless to say, such logically-oriented thinkers as Frege, Russell and Gödel are not entirely neglected, either. Audience: Everybody interested in the philosophy and/or history of mathematics will find this book interesting, giving frequently novel insights.

Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research Community, 1800-1945

Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research Community, 1800-1945 PDF Author: Karen Hunger Parshall
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821821245
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Although today's mathematical research community takes its international character very much for granted, this ``global nature'' is relatively recent, having evolved over a period of roughly 150 years-from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. During this time, the practice of mathematics changed from being centered on a collection of disparate national communities to being characterized by an international group of scholars for whom thegoal of mathematical research and cooperation transcended national boundaries. Yet, the development of an international community was far from smooth and involved obstacles such as war, political upheaval, and national rivalries. Until now, this evolution has been largely overlooked by historians andmathematicians alike. This book addresses the issue by bringing together essays by twenty experts in the history of mathematics who have investigated the genesis of today's international mathematical community. This includes not only developments within component national mathematical communities, such as the growth of societies and journals, but also more wide-ranging political, philosophical, linguistic, and pedagogical issues. The resulting volume is essential reading for anyone interestedin the history of modern mathematics. It will be of interest to mathematicians, historians of mathematics, and historians of science in general.

From Kant to Hilbert Volume 2

From Kant to Hilbert Volume 2 PDF Author: William Bragg Ewald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198505361
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 709

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Book Description
This two-volume work brings together a comprehensive selection of mathematical works from the period 1707-1930. During this time the foundations of modern mathematics were laid, and From Kant to Hilbert provides an overview of the foundational work in each of the main branches of mathmeatics with narratives showing how they were linked. Now available as a separate volume.

Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe

Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Philip Beeley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000207471
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Libraries and archives contain many thousands of early modern mathematical books, of which almost equally many bear readers’ marks, ranging from deliberate annotations and accidental blots to corrections and underlinings. Such evidence provides us with the material and intellectual tools for exploring the nature of mathematical reading and the ways in which mathematics was disseminated and assimilated across different social milieus in the early centuries of print culture. Other evidence is important, too, as the case studies collected in the volume document. Scholarly correspondence can help us understand the motives and difficulties in producing new printed texts, library catalogues can illuminate collection practices, while manuscripts can teach us more about textual traditions. By defining and illuminating the distinctive world of early modern mathematical reading, the volume seeks to close the gap between the history of mathematics as a history of texts and history of mathematics as part of the broader history of human culture.

Space, Number, and Geometry from Helmholtz to Cassirer

Space, Number, and Geometry from Helmholtz to Cassirer PDF Author: Francesca Biagioli
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319317792
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This book offers a reconstruction of the debate on non-Euclidean geometry in neo-Kantianism between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Kant famously characterized space and time as a priori forms of intuitions, which lie at the foundation of mathematical knowledge. The success of his philosophical account of space was due not least to the fact that Euclidean geometry was widely considered to be a model of certainty at his time. However, such later scientific developments as non-Euclidean geometries and Einstein’s general theory of relativity called into question the certainty of Euclidean geometry and posed the problem of reconsidering space as an open question for empirical research. The transformation of the concept of space from a source of knowledge to an object of research can be traced back to a tradition, which includes such mathematicians as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, Richard Dedekind, Felix Klein, and Henri Poincaré, and which finds one of its clearest expressions in Hermann von Helmholtz’s epistemological works. Although Helmholtz formulated compelling objections to Kant, the author reconsiders different strategies for a philosophical account of the same transformation from a neo-Kantian perspective, and especially Hermann Cohen’s account of the aprioricity of mathematics in terms of applicability and Ernst Cassirer’s reformulation of the a priori of space in terms of a system of hypotheses. This book is ideal for students, scholars and researchers who wish to broaden their knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry or neo-Kantianism.