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Mathematicism
Mathematicism is 'the effort to employ the formal structure and rigorous method of mathematics as a model for the conduct of philosophy'. or else it is the epistemological view that reality is fundamentally mathematical. The term has been applied to a number of philosophers, including Pythagoras and René Descartes although the term is not used by themselves. The role of mathematics in Western philosophy has grown and expanded from Pythagoras onwards. Pythagoras is often quoted as first saying "everything is number," and although there is no direct evidence he said this, it is clear that numbers held a particular importance for the Pythagorean school, although it was the later work of Plato that attracts the label of mathematicism from modern philosophers. Furthermore it is René Descartes who provides the first mathematical epistemology which he describes as a mathesis universalis, and which is also referred to as mathematicism. Pythagoras Although we don't have writings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the Western philosophy, West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend, but he appears to have been the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver on the island of Samos. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Crotone, Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, asceticism, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism, although m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinitesimal Calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus; the former concerns instantaneous rates of change, and the slopes of curves, while the latter concerns accumulation of quantities, and areas under or between curves. These two branches are related to each other by the fundamental theorem of calculus, and they make use of the fundamental notions of convergence of infinite sequences and infinite series to a well-defined limit. Infinitesimal calculus was developed independently in the late 17th century by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Later work, including codifying the idea of limits, put these developments on a more solid conceptual footing. Today, calculus has widespread uses in scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inference Rule
In the philosophy of logic, a rule of inference, inference rule or transformation rule is a logical form consisting of a function which takes premises, analyzes their syntax, and returns a conclusion (or conclusions). For example, the rule of inference called ''modus ponens'' takes two premises, one in the form "If p then q" and another in the form "p", and returns the conclusion "q". The rule is valid with respect to the semantics of classical logic (as well as the semantics of many other non-classical logics), in the sense that if the premises are true (under an interpretation), then so is the conclusion. Typically, a rule of inference preserves truth, a semantic property. In many-valued logic, it preserves a general designation. But a rule of inference's action is purely syntactic, and does not need to preserve any semantic property: any function from sets of formulae to formulae counts as a rule of inference. Usually only rules that are recursive are important; i.e. rules suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axiom
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident'. The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question. As used in modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning. As used in mathematics, the term ''axiom'' is used in two related but distinguishable senses: "logical axioms" and "non-logical axioms". Logical axioms are usually statements that are taken to be true within the system of logic they define and are often shown in symbolic form (e.g., (''A'' and ''B'') implies ''A''), while non-logical axioms (e.g., ) are actually ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primitive Notion
In mathematics, logic, philosophy, and formal systems, a primitive notion is a concept that is not defined in terms of previously-defined concepts. It is often motivated informally, usually by an appeal to intuition and everyday experience. In an axiomatic theory, relations between primitive notions are restricted by axioms. Some authors refer to the latter as "defining" primitive notions by one or more axioms, but this can be misleading. Formal theories cannot dispense with primitive notions, under pain of infinite regress (per the regress problem). For example, in contemporary geometry, ''point'', ''line'', and ''contains'' are some primitive notions. Instead of attempting to define them, their interplay is ruled (in Hilbert's axiom system) by axioms like "For every two points there exists a line that contains them both". Details Alfred Tarski explained the role of primitive notions as follows: :When we set out to construct a given discipline, we distinguish, first of all, a ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume ''Principia Mathematica'' (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. ''Principia Mathematica'' is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundations Of Mathematics
Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophy, philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the nature of mathematics. In this latter sense, the distinction between foundations of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics turns out to be quite vague. Foundations of mathematics can be conceived as the study of the basic mathematical concepts (set, function, geometrical figure, number, etc.) and how they form hierarchies of more complex structures and concepts, especially the fundamentally important structures that form the language of mathematics (formulas, theories and their model theory, models giving a meaning to formulas, definitions, proofs, algorithms, etc.) also called metamathematics, metamathematical concepts, with an eye to the philosophical aspects and the unity of mathematics. The search for foundations of mathematics is a cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy Of Mathematics
Ludwig Wittgenstein considered his chief contribution to be in the philosophy of mathematics, a topic to which he devoted much of his work between 1929 and 1944.Roydich V''Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics'' The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy As with his philosophy of language, Wittgenstein's views on mathematics evolved from the period of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: with him changing from logicism (which was endorsed by his mentor Bertrand Russell) towards a general anti-foundationalism and constructivism that was not readily accepted by the mathematical community. The success of Wittgenstein's general philosophy has tended to displace the real debates on more technical issues. His ''Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics'' contains his compiled views, notably a controversial repudiation of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Tractatus Wittgenstein's initial conception of mathematics was logicist and even formalist. The ''Tractatus'' described the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences. Truth is usually held to be the opposite of falsehood. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in various contexts, including philosophy, art, theology, and science. Most human activities depend upon the concept, where its nature as a concept is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion; these include most of the sciences, law, journalism, and everyday life. Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. Most commonly, truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to a mind-independent world. This is called the correspondence theory of truth. Various theo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He is considered "one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers." Biography Carnap's father had risen from being a poor ribbon-weaver to be the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from an academic family; her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld. As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied Wilhelm Dörpfeld on an expedition to Greece. Carnap was raised in a profoundly religious Protestant family, but later became an atheist. He began his formal education at the Barmen Gymnasium and the Gymnasium in Jena. From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics. He also intently studied Immanuel Kant's '' Critique of Pure Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. In spite of his position, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the 75-page ''Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung'' (''Logical-Philosophical Treatise'', 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a book review; and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book ''Philosophical Investigations''. A su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"Bertrand Russell" 1 May 2003. He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote ''Principia Mathematica'', a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
