Related papers: Mathematical Interpretation of Plato's Third Man A…
Even though Plato's philosophy in ancient times was always closely associated with mathematics, modern Platonic scholarship, during the last five centuries, has moved steadily toward de-mathematization. The present work aims to outline a…
In this paper, we study the so-called 'Mathematical part' of Plato's Theaetetus. Its subject concerns the incommensurability of certain magnitudes, in modern terms the question of the rationality or irrationality of the square roots of…
In different passages of his dialogues, Plato showed deep mathematically-based physical insights. Regrettably most readers overlooked the respective statements, or they utterly did not understand those hints since they were full of…
Plato is well-known in mathematics for the eponymous foundational philosophy Platonism based on ideal objects. Plato's allegory of the cave provides a powerful visual illustration of the idea that we only have access to shadows or…
In a first article (referred here as B-O), we studied the first part of the so-called 'mathematical part' of Plato's Theaetetus, i.e. Theodorus' lesson. In the present one, we consider the sequel and the end of the passage (147d7-148b2), as…
In a previous article, we discussed a paradox in Timaeus' cosmology: that there is no void inside the universe, even though it is entirely filled with polyhedra-a mathematical impossibility (Brisson-Ofman 2025). In the present article, we…
Tarski initiated a logic-based approach to formal geometry that studies first-order structures with a ternary betweenness relation (\beta) and a quaternary equidistance relation (\equiv). Tarski established, inter alia, that the first-order…
To account for the first proof of existence of an irrational magnitude, historians of science as well as commentators of Aristotle refer to the texts on the incommensurability of the diagonal in Prior Analytics, since they are the most…
This article critically reappraises arguments in support of Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers. The following results are reported: i) Cantor's proofs of nondenumerability are refuted by analyzing the logical inconsistencies in…
G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem is standardly understood as showing that no sufficiently strong, consistent theory of arithmetic can prove its own consistency, a result typically interpreted against a model-theoretic background in…
This paper examines the incommensurability thesis - one of the most important and controversial ideas to emerge from the simultaneous work of Kuhn and Feyerabend. In the first half, I discuss three aspects of incommensurability -…
Tarski initiated a logic-based approach to formal geometry that studies first-order structures with a ternary betweenness relation \beta, and a quaternary equidistance relation \equiv. Tarski established, inter alia, that the first-order…
In this paper the claim that Zeno's paradoxes have been solved is contested. Although no one has ever touched Zeno without refuting him (Whitehead), it will be our aim to show that, whatever it was that was refuted, it was certainly not…
In two articles ([Brisson-Ofman1, 2]), we have analyzed the so-called 'mathematical passage' of Plato's Theaetetus, the first dialogue of a trilogy including the Sophist and the Statesman. In the present article, we study an important point…
Perfect paradefinite algebras are De Morgan algebras expanded with an operation that allows for the full behavior of classical negation to be restored. They form a variety that is term-equivalent to the variety of involutive Stone algebras.…
We investigate non-wellfounded proof systems based on parsimonious logic, a weaker variant of linear logic where the exponential modality ! is interpreted as a constructor for streams over finite data. Logical consistency is maintained at a…
In the present chapter, we obtain the reconstruction of Theaetetus' theory of ratios of magnitudes based, according to Aristotle's Topics 158b, on the definition of proportion in terms of equal anthyphairesis. Our reconstruction is built on…
The overarching theme of the following pages is that mathematical logic -- centered around the incompleteness theorems -- is first and foremost an investigation of $\textit{computation}$, not arithmetic. Guided by this intuition we will…
In this article I deal with the notion of observation in the most fundamental sense and its representation by means of formal languages serving as expressional tools of formal-axiomatical theories. In doing so, I have taken this notion in…
The chapter advances a reformulation of the classical problem of the nature of mathematical objects (if any), here called "Plato's problem," in line with the program of a philosophy of mathematical practice. It then provides a sketch of a…