News
Joint
Math Meeetings
January 3-6, 2024
San Francisco, CA
Contributed Paper Session
AMS Special Session on Mathematics and PhilosophyFriday, January 5, 8 am - noon
We encourage anyone who has done some recent work related to the philosophy of mathematics to propose a talk for our session. These should be non-technical talks, aimed at a general mathematical audience (for technical work in foundations, there are ASL sessions, for example) but all topics in the philosophy of mathematics (including philosophical aspects of foundations) are welcome.
| Time | Presenter | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 a.m. | Donald G Palmer | Bridging the Boundary of Applied and Pure Mathematics: A Philosophical Argument for Expanding Mathematics and Scientific Disciplines via a New Numeric System |
| 8:30 a.m. | Theodore V Theodosopoulos | Some remarks on collective sense-making |
| 9:00 a.m. | Thomas L Drucker | Lewis Carroll and Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll: P.E.B. Jourdain on the State of Mathematical Philosophy in 1918 |
| 9:30 a.m. | Jared M. Ifland | Metaontology in Light of the Frege-Hilbert Controversy |
| 10:00 a.m. | Martin E Flashman | Do We Need a Separate Philosophy of Geometry? |
| 10:30 a.m. | Chanwoo Lee | Category Theory as an Explanatory Foundation |
| 11:00 a.m. | Owen Biesel | Sheaves of Probability |
Session organizers:
- Tom Morley, Georgia Institute of Technology, morley@math.gatech.edu
- Bonnie Gold: Monmouth University (emerita), bgold@monmouth.edu
Guest Lecture and Discussion
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics: Dissolving Wigner's Applicability ProblemArezoo Islami, San Francisco State University
Friday, January 5, 2024, 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
In a 1980 Monthly article, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics", Richard Hamming discussed what he took to be Wigner's problem (from 1960) of "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" and offered some partial explanations. My goal is to show that Hamming's reading misses Wigner's highly original formulation of the problem. Rereading Wigner's work more closely, we are led in new directions in addressing and solving the applicability problem.