What is mathematics, really?

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

What is mathematics, really?

Reuben Hersh

Jonathan Cape, 1997

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Note

Bibliography: p.[317]-334.

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book tackles the important questions which have engaged mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers for thousands of years and which are still being asked today. It does so with clarity and with scholarship born of first-hand experience; a knowledge both of the ideas and of the people who have pronounced on them. The main purpose of the book is to confront philosophical problems: In what sense do mathematical objects exist? How can we have knowledge of them? Why do mathematicians think mathematical entities exist for ever, independent of human action and knowledge? The book proposes an unconventional answer: mathematics has existence or reality only as part of human culture. Despite its seeming timelessness and infallibility, it is a social, cultural, historic phenomenon.

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Details

  • NCID
    BA41759542
  • ISBN
    • 0224044176
  • Country Code
    uk
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    London
  • Pages/Volumes
    xxiv, 343p
  • Size
    24 cm
  • Subject Headings
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