Related papers: MacLaurin and Morality
150 years after the discovery of quaternions, Hamilton's conjecture that quaternions are a fundamental language for physics is reevaluated and shown to be essentially correct, provided one admits complex numbers in both classical and…
With his research on Aristotle's syllogistic, Jan {\L}ukasiewicz (1934, 1939, 1957, 1963) initiates the branch of logic known as the calculus of names. This field deals with axiomatic systems that analyse various fragments of the logic of…
Darwin's theory of evolution is considered to be one of the greatest scientific gems in modern science. It not only gives us a description of how living things evolve, but also shows how a population evolves through time and also, why only…
The mathematical study of vortices began with Herman von Helmholtz's pioneering study in 1858. It was pursued vigorously over the next two decades, largely by British physicists and mathematicians, in two contexts: Maxwell's vortex analogy…
In his late work (De venatione sapientiae), Cusanus unfolded basic ideas of his brilliant theology. After a long period, this ingenious teaching became clearly recognizable especially in our time. Forward with his face to the back, modern…
In his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Rene Descartes sought ``clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life.'' Almost three centuries later, in ``The foundations of…
This book is the final version of a course on algorithmic information theory and the epistemology of mathematics and physics. This is camera-ready copy prepared for publication as a book, but at the last minute I decided to publish it…
The Jordan measure, the Jordan curve theorem, as well as the other generic references to Camille Jordan's (1838-1922) achievements highlight that the latter can hardly be reduced to the "great algebraist" whose masterpiece, the Trait\'e des…
On April 27, 1900, William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, delivered a visionary speech before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In it, he presented two unresolved problems which, to him, appeared fundamental and unavoidable at…
This paper provides an overview of work, published since the opening of the archives of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end of the twentieth century, regarding the Vatican confronting evolution in the…
Cirquent calculus is a new proof-theoretic and semantic framework, whose main distinguishing feature is being based on circuits, as opposed to the more traditional approaches that deal with tree-like objects such as formulas or sequents.…
Computational Logic is the use of computers to establish facts in a logical formalism. Originating in 19th-century attempts to understand the nature of mathematical reasoning, the subject now comprises a wide variety of formalisms,…
We study how the paradigm of Newton's science, based on the organization of scientific knowledge as a series of mathematical laws, was definitively accepted in science courses - in the last decades of the XVIII century, in England as well…
Stephen Toulmin once observed that `it has never been customary for philosophers to pay much attention to the rhetoric of mathematical debate'. Might the application of Toulmin's layout of arguments to mathematics remedy this oversight?…
Johann Kepler (1571-1630) is sometimes considered as a precursor of science-fiction novels with the writing of "Somnium, sive opus posthumum of astronomia lunaris". In this work published posthumously in 1634 by his son Ludwig, Kepler…
In his book entitled ''A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive'' (1843), John Stuart Mill proposed principles of inductive reasoning in the form of five canons. To date, these canons are classic methods for causal reasoning: they are…
Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration. This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between…
Incomputability as a mathematical notion arose from work of Alan Turing and Alonzo Church in the 1930s. Like Turing himself, it attracted less attention than it deserved beyond the confines of mathematics. Today our experiences in computer…
This paper presents the contemporary Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing as being equivalent to approaches to pricing that emerged before 1700 in the context of Virtue Ethics. This is done by considering the history of science and…
Einstein's thesis ``A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions'' was the second of his five celebrated papers in 1905. Although it is -- thanks to its widespread practical applications -- the most quoted of his papers, it is less known…