Böcker av Frederic Patras

This book deals with the evolution of mathematical thought during the 20th century. Representing a unique point of view combining mathematics, philosophy and history on this issue, it presents an original analysis of key authors, for example Bourbaki, Grothendieck and Husserl. As a product of 19th and early 20th century science, a canon of knowledge or a scientific ideology, mathematical structuralism had to give way. The succession is difficult, still in progress, and uncertain. To understand contemporary mathematics, its progressive liberation from the slogans of "modern mathematics" and the paths that remain open today, it is first necessary to deconstruct the history of this long dominant current. Another conception of mathematical thought emerged in the work of mathematicians such as Hilbert or Weyl, which went beyond the narrow epistemological paths of science in the making. In this tradition, mathematical thought was accompanied by a philosophical requirement. Modernity teaches us to revive it.The book is intended for a varied public: mathematicians concerned with understanding their discipline, philosophers of science, and the erudite public curious about the progress of mathematics.

This book considers the manifold possible approaches, past and present, to our understanding of the natural numbers. They are treated as epistemic objects: mathematical objects that have been subject to epistemological inquiry and attention throughout their history and whose conception has evolved accordingly. Although they are the simplest and most common mathematical objects, as this book reveals, they have a very complex nature whose study illuminates subtle features of the functioning of our thought. Using jointly history, mathematics and philosophy to grasp the essence of numbers, the reader is led through their various interpretations, presenting the ways they have been involved in major theoretical projects from Thales onward. Some pertain primarily to philosophy (as in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Wittgenstein...), others to general mathematics (Euclid''s Elements, Cartesian algebraic geometry, Cantorian infinities, set theory...). Also serving as an introduction to the works and thought of major mathematicians and philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Cantor, Dedekind, Frege, Husserl and Weyl, this book will be of interest to a wide variety of readers, from scholars with a general interest in the philosophy or mathematics to philosophers and mathematicians themselves.