Three different ways in which systems of axioms can contribute to the discovery of new notions are presented and they are illustrated by the various ways in which lattices have been introduced in mathematics by Schröder et al. These historical episodes reveal that the axiomatic method is not only a way of systematizing our knowledge, but that it can also be used as a fruitful tool for discovering and introducing new mathematical notions. Looked at it from this perspective, the creative (...) aspect of axiomatics for mathematical practice is brought to the fore. (shrink)

The notion of idealization has received considerable attention in contemporary philosophy of science but less in philosophy of mathematics. An exception was the ‘critical idealism’ of the neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer. According to Cassirer the methodology of idealization plays a central role for mathematics and empirical science. In this paper it is argued that Cassirer's contributions in this area still deserve to be taken into account in the current debates in philosophy of mathematics. For extremely useful criticisms on earlier versions (...) I am grateful to B.P. Larvor and another anonymous journal referee. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

We offer an interpretation of the words and works of Richard Dedekind and the David Hilbert of around 1900 on which they are held to entertain diverging views on the structure of a deductive science. Firstly, it is argued that Dedekind sees the beginnings of a science in concepts, whereas Hilbert sees such beginnings in axioms. Secondly, it is argued that for Dedekind, the primitive terms of a science are substantive terms whose sense is to be conveyed by elucidation, whereas (...) Hilbert dismisses elucidation and consequently treats the primitives as schematic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper examines consequences of the computer revolution in mathematics. By comparing its repercussions with those of conceptual developments that unfolded in the nineteenth century, I argue that the key epistemological lesson to draw from the two transformative periods is that effective and successful mathematical practices in science result from integrating the computational and conceptual styles of mathematics, and not that one of the two styles of mathematical reasoning is superior. Finally, I show that the methodology deployed by applied (...) mathematicians in modern scientific computing is a paradigmatic instance of this key lesson. (shrink)

The general framework of this paper is a reformulation of Hilbert’s program using the theory of locales, also known as formal or point-free topology [P.T. Johnstone, Stone Spaces, in: Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics, vol. 3, 1982; Th. Coquand, G. Sambin, J. Smith, S. Valentini, Inductively generated formal topologies, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 124 71–106; G. Sambin, Intuitionistic formal spaces–a first communication, in: D. Skordev , Mathematical Logic and its Applications, Plenum, New York, 1987, pp. 187–204]. Formal topology presents a (...) topological space, not as a set of points, but as a logical theory which describes the lattice of open sets. The application to Hilbert’s program is then the following. Hilbert’s ideal objects are represented by points of such a formal space. There are general methods to “eliminate” the use of points, close to the notion of forcing and to the “elimination of choice sequences” in intuitionist mathematics, which correspond to Hilbert’s required elimination of ideal objects. This paper illustrates further this general program on the notion of valuations. They were introduced by Dedekind and Weber [R. Dedekind, H. Weber, Theorie des algebraischen Funktionen einer Veränderlichen, J. de Crelle t. XCII 181–290] to give a rigorous presentation of Riemann surfaces. It can be argued that it is one of the first example in mathematics of point-free representation of spaces [N. Bourbaki, Eléments de Mathématique. Algèbre commutative, Hermann, Paris, 1965, Chapitre 7]. It is thus of historical and conceptual interest to be able to represent this notion in formal topology. (shrink)