Tag Archives: Mathematics

The Quantum Moment, Roads to Reality, Wittgenstein and All That

Posted on February 12, 2019 by Agrippa

On the cultural impact of quantum mechanics, physical reality and the completion of quantum mechanics, and the wonderful life of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Continue reading →

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Logic and the Mechanisation of Reason

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Agrippa

Michael Shenefelt and Heidi White, If A Then B: How the World Discovered Logic, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). This is a truly unique book. It is a history of logic, but it is not a normal history. Not … Continue reading →

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Algebra and A General Theory of Logic

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Agrippa

Michael Friedman’s Reconsidering Logical Positivism, which I have read before but recently got in the mail, is a very good and important book which argues, persuasively, that the dominant interpretation of logical positivism within the Anglo sphere is wrong. It’s … Continue reading →

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Why Thomas Nagel Is Almost Certainly Wrong

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Agrippa

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materalist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012). Thomas Nagel was born in Belgrade so I can’t help but have a certain affection for his writing, even … Continue reading →

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The Ecology of Big Science

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Agrippa

The interface and interlinkages between science and society has long been of especial interest to me, and much on the topic has been written since the 1960s. For example, work on the different attitudes of physicists and computer scientists toward … Continue reading →

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The Structure of Mathematical Revolutions

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Agrippa

Discussion of Kuhn’s account of scientific revolutions often focuses on the physical sciences, which is unsurprising given that Kuhn was a physicist by training. I have also felt that this physics based focus also is a reflection of how physics … Continue reading →

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The Riemann Hypothesis as a Counterexample to Coherentism in Epistemology?

Posted on May 22, 2016 by Agrippa

Coherentism is the main alternative account of justification to that of foundationalism. With the latter, justification is based on beliefs, much like with axioms in mathematics, which are held to be basic and self evidently true. From those beliefs a … Continue reading →

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Forms at Home in the Universe: On Two Problems of Body

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Agrippa

The mind-body problem we are familiar with, so let us not tally with this too much; at least, not yet. There is another problem of body, most famously formulated by Eugene Wigner, in his oft cited paper on the “unreasonable … Continue reading →

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