Revolutions in Mathematics

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Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 1992-08-06
Publisher(s): Oxford University Press
List Price: $112.00

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Summary

Social revolutions--that is critical periods of decisive, qualitative change--are a commonly acknowledged historical fact. But can the idea of revolutionary upheaval be extended to the world of ideas and theoretical debate? The publication of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 led to an exciting discussion of revolutions in the natural sciences. A fascinating, but little known, off-shoot of this was a debate which began in the United States in the mid-1970's as to whether the concept of revolution could be applied to mathematics as well as science. Michael Grove declared that revolutions never occur in mathematics, while Joseph Dauben argued that there have been mathematical revolutions and gave some examples. This book is the first comprehensive examination of the question. It reprints the original papers of Grove, Dauben, and Mehrtens, together with additional chapters giving their current views. To this are added new contributions from nine further experts in the history of mathematics, who each discuss an important episode and consider whether it was a revolution. The whole question of mathematical revolutions is thus examined comprehensively and from a variety of perspectives. This thought-provoking volume will interest mathematicians, philosophers, and historians alike.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Ten 'laws' concerning patterns of change in the history of mathematics 1975
T.S. Kuhn's theories and mathematics: a discussion paper on the new historiography of mathematics 1976
Appendix 1992 revolutions reconsidered
Conceptual revolutions and the history of mathematics: two studies in the growth of knowledge 1984
Appendix 1992: revolutions revisited
Descartes's geometrie and revolutions in mathematics
Was Leibniz a mathematical revolutionary?
The 'fine structure' of mathematical revolutions: metaphysics, legitimacy, and rigourGiulio Giorello
The case of calculus from Newton to Berkeley and MacLaurin
Non-Euclidean geometry and revolutions in mathematics
The 'revolution' in the geometrical vision of space in the nineteenth century, and the hermeneutical epistemology of mathematics
Meta-level revolutions in mathematics
The nineteenth-century revolution in mathematical ontology
A restoration that failed: Paul Finsler's theory of sets
The Fregean revolution in logic
Afterword 1992
A revolution in the historiography of mathematics?
About the contributors
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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