On Mon, 01 Nov 1999 11:20:58 -0800 bill fancher <fancher at pacbell.net>
writes:
>Daniel Davies wrote:
>
>>>Angela:
>>>does anyone know: when did mathematics and philosophy split, btw?
>>
>> My guess would be that this was "very, very recently, if at all", in
>that
>> Bertrand Russell certainly thought that Wittgenstein was doing the
>same
>> sort of thing in /Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus/ and subsequent
>writings
>> that he and Whitehead were doing in /Principia Mathematica/
>>
>> dd
>
Bertrand Russell was undoubtedly correct in arguing that mathematics split off from philosophy during the Hellenistic period but mathematical logic can be seen as constituting a conspicous exception. Its practitioners are often as likely to hold PhD's in philosophy as in mathematics and they can typically be found in math departments, philosophy departments and in some cases in computer science departments. In some universities one can find mathematical logicians who are members of both their university's philosophy and math departments. Many of its best known practitioners have both math and philosophy training. This was the case with both Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead. W.V. Quine who is noted as both a mathematical logician and a philosopher earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics and his doctorate in philosophy at Harvard where he did his dissertation under Whitehead. Kurt Godel was primarily a mathematician but he also dabbled extensively in philosophy having been in his youth a member of the Vienna Circle. Among his papers found after his death were manuscripts of articles defending theism and an idealist metaphysics.
>The mathematicians and men of science connected, more or less closely,
>with Alexandria in the third century before Christ were as able as any
>of the Greeks in the previous century, and did work of equal
>importance.
>But they were not, like their predecessors, men who took all learning
>for their province, and propounded universal philosophies; they were
>specialists in the modern sense. Euclid, Aristarchus, Archimedes, and
>Apollonius, were content to be mathematicians; in philosophy they did
>not aspire to originality. - Bertand Russel, "A History of Western
>Philosophy" p. 223.
>
>--
>science spod
>
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