The Daily Bulletin Archive

A paper by Julian Cole, associate professor of philosophy and humanities, titled "Social Construction, Mathematics, and the Collective Imposition of Function onto Reality" has been published in Erkenntnis, a top generalist journal in philosophy. Cole's paper debunks important aspects of our socially constructed conception of social construction, including the thoughts that social constructs must be arbitrary and subjective, and applies his conclusions to mathematics. His paper "Towards an Institutional Account of the Objectivity, Necessity, and Atemporality of Mathematics" (Philosophia Mathematica) was recently listed as a "Notable Writing" in Princeton University Press’s The Best Writing on Mathematics 2014, which brings together the world’s finest writings on mathematics.