Du Châtelet’s Philosophy of Mathematics

In Fatema Amijee (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Du Châtelet. Bloomsbury (forthcoming)
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Abstract

I begin by outlining Du Châtelet’s ontology of mathematical objects: she is an idealist, and mathematical objects are fictions dependent on acts of abstraction. Next, I consider how this idealism can be reconciled with her endorsement of necessary truths in mathematics, which are grounded in essences that we do not create. Finally, I discuss how mathematics and physics relate within Du Châtelet’s idealism. Because the primary objects of physics are partly grounded in the same kinds of acts as yield mathematical objects, she thinks we are sometimes licensed in drawing conclusions about physical things from mathematical premises.

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Aaron Wells
Paderborn University

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References found in this work

Platonism and anti-Platonism in mathematics.Mark Balaguer - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Emilie du Chatelet's Metaphysics of Substance.Marius Stan - 2018 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (3):477-496.
Leibniz and the two Sophies: the philosophical correspondence.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz & Lloyd Strickland - 2011 - Toronto: Iter. Edited by Sophia, Sophie Charlotte & Lloyd Strickland.

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