Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices
eBook - ePub

Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices

  1. 360 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices

About this book

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, José Ferreirós 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, Ferreirós shows how the mathematical tradition evolved from Euclidean geometry to the real numbers and set-theoretic structures. He 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. Ferreirós 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, Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices challenges us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mathematics, its objectivity, and its relationship to culture and science.

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Yes, you can access Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices by José Ferreirós in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Applied Mathematics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. List of Illustrations
  6. Foreword
  7. 1 On Knowledge and Practices: A Manifesto
  8. 2 The Web of Practices
  9. 3 Agents and Frameworks
  10. 4 Complementarity in Mathematics
  11. 5 Ancient Greek Mathematics: A Role for Diagrams
  12. 6 Advanced Math: The Hypothetical Conception
  13. 7 Arithmetic Certainty
  14. 8 Mathematics Developed: The Case of the Reals
  15. 9 Objectivity in Mathematical Knowledge
  16. 10 The Problem of Conceptual Understanding
  17. References
  18. Index