Mathematics, Science and Postclassical Theory (South Atlantic Quarterly) - Softcover

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822364263 ISBN 13: 9780822364269

Publisher: Duke University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory is a unique collection of essays dealing with the intersections between science and mathematics and the radical reconceptions of knowledge, language, proof, truth, and reality currently emerging from poststructuralist literary theory, constructivist history and sociology of science, and related work in contemporary philosophy. Featuring a distinguished group of international contributors, this volume engages themes and issues central to current theoretical debates in virtually all disciplines: agency, causality, determinacy, representation, and the social dynamics of knowledge. In a substantive introductory essay, the editors explain the notion of "postclassical theory" and discuss the significance of ideas such as emergence and undecidability in current work in and on science and mathematics. Other essays include a witty examination of the relations among mathematical thinking, writing, and the technologies of virtual reality; an essay that reconstructs the conceptual practices that led to a crucial mathematical discovery-or construction-in the 19th century; a discussion of the implications of Bohr's complementarity principle for classical ideas of reality; an examination of scientific laboratories as "hybrid" communities of humans and nonhumans; an analysis of metaphors of control, purpose, and necessity in contemporary biology; an exploration of truth and lies, and the play of words and numbers in Shakespeare, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Beckett; and a final chapter on recent engagements, or nonengagements, between rationalist/realist philosophy of science and contemporary science studies. Contributors. Malcolm Ashmore, Michel Callon, Owen Flanagan, John Law, Susan Oyama, Andrew Pickering, Arkady Plotnitsky, Brian Rotman, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, John Vignaux Smyth, E. Roy Weintraub

About this title

From the Back Cover

'Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory' is a unique collection of essays dealing with the intersections between science and mathematics and the radical reconceptions of knowledge, language, proof, truth, and reality currently emerging from poststructuralist literary theory, constructive history and sociology of science, and related work in contemporary philosophy.

About the Author

Arkady Plotnitsky holds degrees in Mathematics from the University of St. Petersburg and Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the English Department.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0822364263
• ISBN 13: 9780822364269
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 230
• Editor: Plotnitsky Arkady