Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric (Mar 2016)

Theological Underpinnings of the Modern Philosophy of Mathematics.

  • Shaposhnikov Vladislav

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1515/slgr-2016-0003
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 44, no. 1
pp. 31 – 54

Abstract

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The study is focused on the relation between theology and mathematics in the situation of increasing secularization. My main concern is nineteenth-century mathematics. Theology was present in modern mathematics not through its objects or methods, but mainly through popular philosophy, which absolutized mathematics. Moreover, modern pure mathematics was treated as a sort of quasi-theology; a long-standing alliance between theology and mathematics made it habitual to view mathematics as a divine knowledge, so when theology was discarded, mathematics naturally took its place at the top of the system of knowledge. It was that cultural expectation aimed at mathematics that was substantially responsible for a great resonance made by set-theoretic paradoxes, and, finally, the whole picture of modern mathematics.