FOM: PhoM vs FoM

[JOE SHIPMAN, BLOOMBERG/ NEW YORK]

Yesterday I bought an anthology "New Directions in the Philosophy of
Mathematics" (Revised and Expanded Edition, Ed. Thomas Tymoczko, Princeton
University Press 1998, ISBN 0-691-03498-2) at the Borders bookstore in midtown
Manhattan.  There is a lot of very good stuff in there, as well as a lot of
wrong-headedness.  (Contributors Hersh, Lakatos, Putnam, Thom, Goodman, Polya,
Wang, P.J.Davis, Wilder, Grabiner, Kitcher, Tymoczko, Demillo Lipton & Perlis,
Chaitin, Resnik, Thurston, Maddy).  The editor adopts an avowedly
anti-Foundationalist stance!  I think contributors to the FOM list (especially
Harvey and Steve) need to read this book and answer its challenge.  In
particular, the contributions of the last six authors I mentioned are
technically detailed and deserve a careful response.  (They are not all opposed
to "Foundations" as Tymoczko is.)   I hope to respond to some of the pieces
 myself, but in the meantime recommend this book very strongly as  a
thought-provoker which provides a lot of new meat for those of us tired of
chewing over the same old bones.  -- Joe Shipman


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I told you so.