Ilkka Pättiniemi Lately, as one does, I have been reading up on the philosophy, and especially epistemology of mathematics. In doing so, I chanced upon the great, late philosopher of mathematics, Thomas Tymoczko. In his paper “Computers, Proofs and Mathematicians: A Philosophical Investigation of the Four-Color Proof” (1980) Tymoczko gives five very sensible criteria forContinue reading “Tymoczko on the Epistemology of Mathematics”
Tag Archives: philosophy of mathematics
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Natural Language
Ilkka Pättiniemi In his classic paper “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” (1960), Eugene Wigner tells a story of two friends meeting after a long while. One of them has become a statistician working in population trends. He shows a reprint of his recent paper to his friend, who, upon seeing aContinue reading “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Natural Language”
