🚀 go-pugleaf

                STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO

                        BUFFALO LOGIC COLLOQUIUM

                               1988-1989

                             Second Meeting

              Joint meeting with the Philosophy Colloquium

                            NICOLAS GOODMAN

                       Department of Mathematics
                              SUNY Buffalo

         "IN DEFENSE OF AN INFINITISTIC MATHEMATICS OF NATURE"

                      Wednesday, October 12, 1988
                               4:00 P.M.
                     684 Baldy Hall, Amherst Campus

There is a skeptical tradition in the  philosophy  of  mathematics  that
goes  back at least to Hilbert in the 1920s and that is well represented
in a recent paper by Stephen Simpson in _J. Symbolic  Logic_  53  (1988)
349-363.   This  tradition  holds  that  mathematical  analysis, even as
applied to the description of nature, is so abstract and infinitary that
it  is implausible, even meaningless, as it stands.  To remedy this, the
tradition proposes to reduce analysis to  some  more  secure  finitistic
theory.  In the present paper, I defend applied analysis by appealing to
ideas from the recent philosophy of the  empirical  sciences.   Specifi-
cally,  I deny that there is a clear distinction between mathematics and
physics, and conclude that mathematical analysis is our best established
theory of nature.

For further information, contact John Corcoran, (716) 636-2438.