Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap - Hardcover

Potter, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019825041X ISBN 13: 9780198250418

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 2000

Synopsis

This is a critical examination of the astonishing progress made in the philosophical study of the properties of the natural numbers from the 1880s to the 1930s. Reassessing the brilliant innovations of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and others, which transformed philosophy as well as our understanding of mathematics, Michael Potter places arithmetic at the interface between experience, language, thought, and the world.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Potter is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Philosophy, having previously been Lecturer in Mathematics.

Review

`both stimulating and insightful'
MIND, Vol.110, No.439

`Another virtue of the book is its careful attention to the interaction of technical and philosophical issues. Adept in mathematics, Potter nicely brings out the mathematical content of various philosophical positions. His chapter on the Tractatus is particularly admirable in this respect; it
must be one of the best discussions available of the philosophy of mathematics developed in that work'
MIND, Vol.110, No.439

`refreshingly different from much of the recent work in the field'
MIND, Vol.110, No.439

`There is much of value in the book, not just for those interested in the philosophy of mathematics.'
Michael Potter, TLS

`an instructive and absorbing history of a critical fifty-year period in the philosophy of mathematics'
Michael Potter, TLS

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 019825041X
• ISBN 13: 9780198250418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 316