David Corfield Thomas Kuhn, Modern Mathematics and the Dynamics of Reason

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An article I’ve written, (pdf), published in Yafeng Shan (ed.) Rethinking Thomas Kuhn’s Legacy, pp. 51-76.

Abstract: It is now 30 years since a group of philosophers and historians published a collection of articles (Gillies (ed.) 1992) which took as their central question the usefulness for the philosophy of mathematics of Kuhn’s constructions in the philosophy of science. Important work was done to see whether the concepts of ‘revolution’ and ‘paradigm’ made sense there. However, a feature of the collection which should raise doubts about the universality of its findings was the restriction, except in a single case, to work done prior to 1900. In this article I discuss what form a historically-oriented philosophy of modern mathematics should take, and the role it could play in developing Michael Friedman’s post-Kuhnian theory as described in his ‘Dynamics of Reason’ (2001) and later publications.

For more on Michael Friedman, see here, and my talk Dynamics of Reason Revisited (slides).

Last revised on August 14, 2024 at 09:26:21. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.