Philosophia Mathematica (III), Vol. 13 No. 1 © Oxford University Press, 2005, all rights reserved
Book Review |
Martin H. Krieger. Doing Mathematics: Convention, Subject, Calculation, Analogy. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2003. Pp. xviii + 454. ISBN 981-238-2003 (cloth); 981-238-2062 (paperback)
* Department of Philosophy, University of York York YO10 5DD England dc23@york.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
‘I want to provide a description of some of the work that mathematicians do, employing modern and sophisticated examples.’ Having read this opening statement of chapter 1, leafed through the text past terms such as ‘Langlands Program’, ‘Onsager phases’ and ‘Painlevé complex’, and taken a cursory glance at the index and bibliography, some readers of Philosophia Mathe-matica might have serious doubts as to whether Martin Krieger's book Doing Mathematics is a work of philosophy. No Frege, no Quine, no Boolos, no Benacerraf .... That the author takes himself to be very much engaged on a philosophical project is clear:
I take from Weyl the warrant for a philosophy of mathematics that is based on ‘what is really going on’, and on the connections with the historico-phi-loso-phical context. But, whatever else, such philosophizing is done through ma-the-ma-tical means, examining and explaining actual definitions, constructions, theorems, proofs, derivations and examples. Of course,. . . [Full Text of this Article]
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