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6 - Maoist Mathematics?

Critical Study of John Burgess and Gideon Rosen, A Subject with No Object: Strategies for Nominalistic Interpretation of Mathematics (Oxford, 1997)

from Part I - Structuralism, Extendability, and Nominalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2021

Geoffrey Hellman
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Summary

This book has many virtues. It is concentrated on fundamental questions in the philosophy of mathematics, which it explores with an open mind – or even two open minds; it is richly informed and informative in its clear exposition of the details of nominalistic reconstruction programs, indeed the whole extant gamut of them, some themselves usefully reconstructed; it concludes with a novel insight into the unsuspected value of these programs (to be explained below); and, of special immediate relevance, it is remarkably balanced in its argumentation and self-contained, even to the point of containing its own review! Not verbatim, of course, but implicitly, as a scattered whole, merely awaiting a judicious selection and assembly, with occasional textually inspired critical commentary. Here follows an attempt at such.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mathematics and Its Logics
Philosophical Essays
, pp. 88 - 100
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Burgess, J., Hazen, A., and Lewis, D. [1991] “Appendix,” in Lewis, D., Parts of Classes (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 121149.Google Scholar
Chihara, C. S. [1990] Constructibility and Mathematical Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Field, H. [1980] Science without Numbers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Goodman, N. [1977] The Structure of Appearance, 3rd edn. (Dordrecht: Reidel).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellman, G. [1989] Mathematics without Numbers: Towards a Modal-Structural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Hellman, G. [1993] Book review: Charles S. Chihara, Constructibility and Mathematical Existence (Oxford University Press, 1990),” Philosophia Mathematica 1(1): 7588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellman, G. [1996] “Structuralism without structures,” Philosophia Mathematica 4(2): 100123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malament, D. [1982] Review of Field’s Science without Numbers, Journal of Philosophy 79: 523534.Google Scholar

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  • Maoist Mathematics?
  • Geoffrey Hellman, University of Minnesota
  • Book: Mathematics and Its Logics
  • Online publication: 26 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657419.007
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  • Maoist Mathematics?
  • Geoffrey Hellman, University of Minnesota
  • Book: Mathematics and Its Logics
  • Online publication: 26 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657419.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Maoist Mathematics?
  • Geoffrey Hellman, University of Minnesota
  • Book: Mathematics and Its Logics
  • Online publication: 26 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657419.007
Available formats
×