Bernie Lewin

Bernie Lewin is an amateur historian and philosopher of science based in Melbourne, Australia.

His historical interests include: ancient Pythagorean mathematics; Catholic skepticism of the 16th Century; the epistemological revolution begun during the Restoration of the British monarchy in the 17th Century; and the 'Foundation of Mathematics' controversy that started in the late 19th century. A recent interest in the corruption of post-WWII state-funded natural science led to his first published book, 'Searching for the Catastrophe Signal'.

If there is one word to describe his philosophical view it is Platonism. This underlies his history investigations as well as his approach to George Spencer Brown's 'Laws of Form' (1969). 'Laws of Form' presents the 'Boolean arithmetic' elementary to logic and all forms of arithmetic. For Lewin, 'Laws of Form' might well herald a revival of Platonic science by showing a better way -- a more Pythagorean way (i.e., self-referencing, non-analytical) -- to build a hierarchy of infinite numbers and, in doing so, forge a new relationship with geometry. This view is carefully developed through an historical narrative in his second book, Enthusiastic Mathematics.

Lewin is the founding director of the Platonic Academy of Melbourne.