Phenomenology and Mathematics

This Element explores the relationship between phenomenology and mathematics, focusing on the mathematical thought of Edmund Husserl.

Michael Roubach (Author)

9781009462501, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 December 2023

80 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1 cm, 0.27 kg

This Element explores the relationship between phenomenology and mathematics. Its focus is the mathematical thought of Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology, but other phenomenologists and phenomenologically-oriented mathematicians, including Weyl, Becker, Gödel, and Rota, are also discussed. After outlining the basic notions of Husserl's phenomenology, the author traces Husserl's journey from his early mathematical studies. Phenomenology's core concepts, such as intention and intuition, each contributed to the emergence of a phenomenological approach to mathematics. This Element examines the phenomenological conceptions of natural number, the continuum, geometry, formal systems, and the applicability of mathematics. It also situates the phenomenological approach in relation to other schools in the philosophy of mathematics-logicism, formalism, intuitionism, Platonism, the French epistemological school, and the philosophy of mathematical practice.

1. Basic concepts of Husserl's phenomenology
2. Husserl's path from mathematics to phenomenology
3. Phenomenology of mathematics
4. Phenomenology and philosophies of mathematics
References.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA]