FOM: attitudes of core mathematicians and applied modeltheoriststoward f.o.m.

charles silver silver_1 at mindspring.com
Thu Jan 27 14:25:06 EST 2000


Mark Steiner wrote:
>        And this reminds me that I should have mentioned precisely this
>critical role for philosophy and maybe even f.o.m. concerning science
>and mathematics.  Goodman's Empiricist predecessor, George Berkeley,
>leveled a devastating critique at tne Newton/Leibniz infinitesimal
>calculus, calling the differential "the ghost of a departed quantity."
>I believe the consensus in the mathematical and philosophical community
>is that Berkeley was right, but that mathematicians were correct to
>ignore his criticism during the pioneer days of analysis.

    Doesn't non-standard analysis show that Berkeley was wrong and Leibniz
was right?

Charlie






More information about the FOM mailing list