[FOM] David Corfield's new book on "Real Mathematics"

[Martin Krieger]

I see that David Corfield has expanded his articles into a book. http://books.cambridge.org/0521817226.htm
What I liked about his work was the consideration of richer than usual examples: Hopf algebras, other group theory, etc. His claim is that one ought to examine actual contemporary math in trying to do philosophy of math. It is an interesting complement to FOM concerns, from the philosophical side. Here is some of the info from the site:
      Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics
      David Corfield
      Cambridge University Press April 2003 | Hardback | 300 pages 1 table
16 figures | ISBN: 0521817226

      David Corfield attacks the widely held view
that it is the nature of mathematical knowledge which has shaped the way in
which mathematics is treated philosophically, and claims that contingent
factors have brought us to the present thematically limited discipline.
Illustrating his discussion with a wealth of examples, he sets out a variety
of approaches to new thinking about the philosophy of mathematics, ranging
from an exploration of whether computers producing mathematical proofs or
conjectures are doing real mathematics, to the use of analogy, the prospects
for a Bayesian confirmation theory, the notion of a mathematical research
programme, and the ways in which new concepts are justified. 

MK
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/fom/attachments/20030428/c5aea9ca/attachment.html