What Is Mathematics About?
Michael Dummett
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Source: Crossref
Published: Sep 8, 1994
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195079296.003.0002
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Abstract The two most abstract of the intellectual disciplines, philosophy and mathematics, give rise to the same perplexity: what are they about? The perplexity does not arise solely out of ignorance: even the practitioners of these subjects may find it difficult to answer the question. Mathematics presents itself as a science in the general sense in which history is a science, namely as a sector in the quest for truth. Even those least instructed in other sciences, however, have some general idea what it is that those sciences strive to establish the truth about. Historians aim at establishing the truth about what was done by and what happened to human beings in the past; more exactly, to human beings after they had invented writing. Physicists try to discover the general properties of matter under the widest variety of conditions; more generally, of matter and of what it propagates, such as light and heat.
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