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Intellectual History Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History

Tarski And Bachmann In Regina: A Magical Connection, James T. Smith Aug 2023

Tarski And Bachmann In Regina: A Magical Connection, James T. Smith

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a personal account of an intersection of the schools of research in foundations of geometry founded by Alfred Tarski and Friedrich Bachmann. Their academic lineages and the origins of the schools are also described, as well as the mathematics that resulted from this intersection.


Our Lady, Queen Of Undecidable Propositions, Hugh C. Culik Jul 2016

Our Lady, Queen Of Undecidable Propositions, Hugh C. Culik

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Boundary systems take many forms: personal, historical, mathematical, and in the case of an elderly Jesuit and a young mathematician, a struggle to identify the larger boundary that both connects them and provides their separate identities. Their ragged conversation is couched in a pastiche of historical, popular, and personal notions of mathematics; however their language is simultaneously natural and mathematical so that it points to the irremediable gaps that the multitude of our languages attempt to "solve." Father McMann pages through his list of such incommensurables: female/male, young/old, parabola/limit, rational/surd and “all the other 88 asynchronies that plagued his dreams …


The Discipline Of History And The “Modern Consensus In The Historiography Of Mathematics”, Michael N. Fried Jul 2014

The Discipline Of History And The “Modern Consensus In The Historiography Of Mathematics”, Michael N. Fried

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Teachers and students of mathematics often view history of mathematics as just mathematics as they know it, but in another form. This view is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of history of mathematics and the kind of knowledge it attempts to acquire. Unfortunately, it can also lead to a deep sense of disappointment with the history of mathematics itself, and, ultimately, a misunderstanding of the historical nature of mathematics. This kind of misunderstanding and the disappointment following from it--both raised to the level of resentment--run through the paper "A Critique of the Modern Consensus in the Historiography of …