Ancient Indian astro-mathematical tradition: Evolution and linkages

Author(s):  
Rajesh Kochhar ◽  
Manuel de León ◽  
D. M. de Diego ◽  
R. M. Ros
Author(s):  
José Ferreirós

This book presents a new approach to the epistemology of mathematics by viewing mathematics as a human activity whose knowledge is intimately linked with practice. Charting an exciting new direction in the philosophy of mathematics, the book uses the crucial idea of a continuum to provide an account of the development of mathematical knowledge that reflects the actual experience of doing math and makes sense of the perceived objectivity of mathematical results. Describing a historically oriented, agent-based philosophy of mathematics, the book shows how the mathematical tradition evolved from Euclidean geometry to the real numbers and set-theoretic structures. It argues for the need to take into account a whole web of mathematical and other practices that are learned and linked by agents, and whose interplay acts as a constraint. It demonstrates how advanced mathematics, far from being a priori, is based on hypotheses, in contrast to elementary math, which has strong cognitive and practical roots and therefore enjoys certainty. Offering a wealth of philosophical and historical insights, the book challenges us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mathematics, its objectivity, and its relationship to culture and science.


Author(s):  
Jon Barwise ◽  
John Etchemendy

Psychologists have long been interested in the relationship between visualization and the mechanisms of human reasoning. Mathematicians have been aware of the value of diagrams and other visual tools both for teaching and as heuristics for mathematical discovery. As the chapters in this volume show, such tools are gaining even greater value, thanks in large part to the graphical potential of modern computers. But despite the obvious importance of visual images in human cognitive activities, visual representation remains a second-class citizen in both the theory and practice of mathematics. In particular, we are all taught to look askance at proofs that make crucial use of diagrams, graphs, or other nonlinguistic forms of representation, and we pass on this disdain to our students. In this chapter, we claim that visual forms of representation can be important, not just as heuristic and pedagogic tools, but as legitimate elements of mathematical proofs. As logicians, we recognize that this is a heretical claim, running counter to centuries of logical and mathematical tradition. This tradition finds its roots in the use of diagrams in geometry. The modern attitude is that diagrams are at best a heuristic in aid of finding a real, formal proof of a theorem of geometry, and at worst a breeding ground for fallacious inferences. For example, in a recent article, the logician Neil Tennant endorses this standard view: . . . [The diagram] is only an heuristic to prompt certain trains of inference; . . . it is dispensable as a proof-theoretic device; indeed, . . . it has no proper place in the proof as such. For the proof is a syntactic object consisting only of sentences arranged in a finite and inspectable array (Tennant [1984]). . . . It is this dogma that we want to challenge. We are by no means the first to question, directly or indirectly, the logocentricity of mathematics arid logic. The mathematicians Euler and Venn are well known for their development of diagrammatic tools for solving mathematical problems, and the logician C. S. Peirce developed an extensive diagrammatic calculus, which he intended as a general reasoning tool.


Metascience ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-311
Author(s):  
Toke Knudsen

Osiris ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 186-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Rowe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Sutherland

Kant's Mathematical World aims to transform our understanding of Kant's philosophy of mathematics and his account of the mathematical character of the world. Daniel Sutherland reconstructs Kant's project of explaining both mathematical cognition and our cognition of the world in terms of our most basic cognitive capacities. He situates Kant in a long mathematical tradition with roots in Euclid's Elements, and thereby recovers the very different way of thinking about mathematics which existed prior to its 'arithmetization' in the nineteenth century. He shows that Kant thought of mathematics as a science of magnitudes and their measurement, and all objects of experience as extensive magnitudes whose real properties have intensive magnitudes, thus tying mathematics directly to the world. His book will appeal to anyone interested in Kant's critical philosophy -- either his account of the world of experience, or his philosophy of mathematics, or how the two inform each other.


Author(s):  
Andrea Bergamini

This article illustrates how during early modernity Italian and Dutch cultures and particularly artistic traditions contributed differently to both the theoretical and practical developments of science. To achieve this goal, it will firstly compare the two forms of detextualization of space operated by Italian artists and by Dutch artists. Finally, it will indicate how each detextualization allowed for the development within the science of the mathematical tradition by the Italian Culture and the experimental tradition by the Dutch culture.


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