Philosophy of Mathematics

Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction provides a critical analysis of the major philosophical issues and viewpoints in the concepts and methods of mathematics – from antiquity to the modern era.

• Offers beginning readers a critical appraisal of philosophical viewpoints throughout history
• Gives a separate chapter to predicativism, which is often (but wrongly) treated as if it were a part of logicism
• Provides readers with a non-partisan discussion until the final chapter, which gives the author’s personal opinion on where the truth lies
• Designed to be accessible to both undergraduates and graduate students, and at the same time to be of interest to professionals

Table of Contents

1. Plato versus Aristotle

2. From Aristotle to Kant

3. Reactions to Kant

4. Mathematics and its Foundations

5. Logicism

6. Formalism

7. Intuitionism

8. Predicativism

9. Realism and Nominalism

About the Author

David Bostock has been a Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Merton College, and Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His recent publications include Intermediate Logic (1997), Aristotle’s Ethics (2000), and Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s Physics (2006).