Roi Wagner. Making and Breaking Mathematical Sense: Histories and Philosophies of Mathematical Practice. Princeton University Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-691-17171-5 (hbk); 978-1-40088378-3 (e-book). Pp. xiv + 236.

摘要

Is mathematics a reflection of some already-given realm? It would not matter whether we are talking about the empirical world in a Millian way, or the domain of a priori truths in Leibnizian or maybe Kantian style, or some world of analytical truths à la Carnap. Or perhaps-could mathematics be something more, or something less, than such a reflection? Might it be human, perhaps, dependent on our kind, on our forms of life? Could it just be a set of techniques and conceptions that we develop and employ to establish order and measure in the world around us, in our activities and our environment?