The Connecticut Valley Colloquium
The Connecticut Valley Colloquium
4:30 pm, Monday, 4 May 1998
McConnell Hall 404
Clark Science Center
Professor Chandler Davis
Mathematics Department, University of Toronto
Editor-in-chief, Mathematical Intelligencer
The mathematical agnostic
Abstract
The title refers to mathematicians who deny that mathematically
defined, abstract objects exist independent of our thought and outside of
the physically existing universe. There are many mathematical agnostics,
then, including Kronecker, Brouwer, Weyl, and most applied mathematicians.
I will show why agnosticism has many faces, and I will argue that some one
of its variants must be the mathematical philosophy of the future.
- Tea at 4:00 pm in the Math Forum on the third floor of Burton Hall
- Talk at 4:30 pm in McConnell 404
- Dinner at 5:45 pm at the Green Street Cafe. For reservations, please phone Joice Gare (413-585-3803) in the Science Center by noon, Friday, May 1.