philosophy

Patents for software?

Recent Work /

  AT SOME point in their career every mathematician comes up against the question, is mathematics invented or discovered? The query makes some cranky. The answer doesn’t directly affect their work, after all, and the discussion often leads nowhere useful. Spending time debating the ultimate nature of mathematics takes away from actually doing it.  

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Descartes’ Decipherer

Math stories, Not science, Tech /

Erik-Jan Bos, a philosopher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, unearthed research gold with an Internet search. In putting together a critical edition of René Descartes’ correspondence, due out in 2014, he discovered a stolen, never-before-published letter from the seventeenth- century French philosopher and mathematician. In the run-up to Descartes’ 416th birthday on 31 March,

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