Mathematics and Necessity: Essays in the History of Philosophy

Timothy Smiley

ISBN 10: 0197262155 / ISBN 13: 9780197262153

Edité par Oxford university press, 2001

A propos de cet article

Envoi rapide Très bon état de conservation intérieur propre bonne tenue avec sa jaquette (dos insolé). in8. 2001. Cartonné jaquette. Very Good.

N° de réf. du vendeur 100130144

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Mathematics and Necessity: Essays in the History of Philosophy
• Éditeur: Oxford university press
• Date de parution: 2001
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0197262155
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780197262153
• Reliure: Couverture rigide
• État de l'article: Very Good
• État de la jaquette: Jaquette
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Mathématiques

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Why did Plato put mathematics at the heart of education for the rulers of his ideal city? Why has mathematics played such a central role in Western philosophy? And just how do we acquire knowledge of necessary truths? Three philosophers of international repute tackle these questions. M. F. Burnyeat brings out Plato's distinctive vision of the world as it objectively is: the structures of mathematics are also the structures that express the nature of the human soul and the soul that governs the world. Ian Hacking highlights the phenomena associated with the actual experience of proof, which so impressed philosopher-mathematicians like Descartes and Leibniz and onlookers like Plato and Wittgenstein. Jonathan Bennett explores modal discovery in Locke and Leibniz, and the infallibility of reason in Descartes and Spinoza. The answers offered by these distinguished scholars make a significant contribution to our understanding of some of the great thinkers of the past.

À propos de l'auteur

The volume is edited by Timothy Smiley, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Jonathan Bennett has written extensively on early modern philosophy as well as on ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind and language, his most recent book being The Act Itself (1995). After a career spent mostly at the Universities of Cambridge, British Columbia, and Syracuse, he now lives in retirement on Bowen Island, British Columbia. He recently completed a two-volume work entitled Learning from Six Philosophers (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), and hopes to complete a much shorter one on conditionals. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. M. F. Burnyeat is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford. He was for twelve years (1984-96) Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Cambridge University; before that, Lecturer in Philosophy at University College London for fourteen years, then Lecturer in Classics and Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1984, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1992. He is the author of The Theaetetus of Plato (1990) and of articles in both classical and philosophical journals. His contribution to this volume may be read as a sequel to his `Culture and Society in Plato's Republic', The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 20 (1999), 217-324, which deals with the elementary education in Plato's ideal city. Ian Hacking is University Professor in the University of Toronto, where he has taught since 1983. Previously he had taught at the Universities of British Columbia, Makerere, Cambridge, and Stanford. He has published a number of books on the foundations of statistics, the philosophy of language, the history of ideas of probability, and the philosophy of experimental science. His most recent books are Rewriting the Soul (1995), Mad Travelers (1998) and The Social Construction of What? (1999). He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.