What Makes Mathematics Mathematics?

Many students of Timothy Smiley have been interested in the philosophy of mathematics. We have seldom paused to ask what counts as mathematics. Certainly we have thought a good deal about the nature of mathematics-in my case, for example, about the logicist claim that mathematics is logic.1 But we t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Force of Argument pp. 96 - 120
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published United Kingdom Routledge 2010
Taylor & Francis Group
Subjects
Philosophy: logic
Cathedral Windows
OED Defi
Cognitive History
Proof Idea
FOM
Peculiar Subject Matter
Macroscopic Wave Functions
PLATO
Title Question
Pure Mathematics
Timothy Smiley
Fi Rst Glimpse
Infl Uential Ideas
Modern Condensed Matter Physics
Timeless
Routledge Encyclopedia
Mixed Mathematics
Diogenes
Fi Rst Critique
Demonstrative Proof
Molecular Neurobiology
Pure
Cold Atoms
Laboratory Style
Online AccessGet full text

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Summary:Many students of Timothy Smiley have been interested in the philosophy of mathematics. We have seldom paused to ask what counts as mathematics. Certainly we have thought a good deal about the nature of mathematics-in my case, for example, about the logicist claim that mathematics is logic.1 But we took ‘mathematics’ for granted, and seldom refl ected on why we so readily recognize a conjecture, a fact, a proof idea, a piece of reasoning, or a subdiscipline, as mathematical. We asked sophisticated questions about which parts of mathematics are constructive, or about set theory. But we shied away from the naïve question of why so many diverse topics addressed by real-life mathematicians are immediately recognized as ‘mathematics’.
ISBN:9780415801201
0415801206
DOI:10.4324/9780203859810-10