PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (Oct 2015)

Listening to the Music of Reason: Nicolas Bourbaki and the Phenomenology of the Mathematical Experience

  • TILL DÜPPE

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22329/p.v10i0.3935
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

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Jean Dieudonné, the spokesman of the group of French mathematicians named Bourbaki, called mathematics the music of reason. This metaphor invites a phenomenological account of the affective, in contrast to the epistemic and discursive, nature of mathematics: What constitutes its charm? Mathematical reasoning is described as a perceptual experience, which in Husserl’s late philosophy would be a case of passive synthesis. Like a melody, a mathematical proof is manifest in an affective identity of a temporal object. Rather than an exercise for its own sake, this account sheds a different light on both the epistemic limitation of mathematical science, and the discursive problem of social responsibility in mathematics – two issues at the heart of Husserl’s critique of science as well as of mid-20th century mathematics, for which Nicolas Bourbaki stands as a monument of rigor.