Vol. 66, Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers (Sep., 1999), pp. S14-S27 (14 pages) In this paper I argue that ...

Algebraic structures, encompassing groups, rings, fields and modules, have long formed the backbone of modern mathematics. Category theory, with its focus on objects and morphisms, provides a unifying ...

On a crisp fall New England day during my junior year of college, I was walking past a subway entrance when a math problem caught my eye. A man was standing near a few brainteasers he had scribbled on ...

The equal sign is the bedrock of mathematics. It seems to make an entirely fundamental and uncontroversial statement: These things are exactly the same. But there is ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Jayshree Pandya is Founder of Risk Group & Host of Risk Roundup. The human ecosystem is made of open and closed systems. While the ...

In the present article two possible meanings of the term "mathematical structure" are discussed: a formal and a nonformal one. It is claimed that contemporary mathematics is structural only in the ...

Presents propositional logic, combinatorics, methods of proof, mathematical systems, algebra of sets, matrix algebra, relations and functions, recursion and generating functions, applications to ...

Every pure mathematician has experienced that awkward moment when asked, “So what’s your research good for?” There are standard responses: a proud “Nothing!”; an explanation that mathematical research ...