Philosophical Aspects of Symbolic Reasoning in Early Modern Mathematics

This book presents a selection of peer-reviewed papers which were presented on a conference organized in Ghent, Belgium, from 27 till 29 August, 2009. The conference was given the title Philosophical Aspects of Symbolic Reasoning in Early modern Science and Mathematics (PASR). For this book we selected papers which deal with the consequences for mathematics in particular, hence the omission of ‘science’ in the title of this book. Another selection, dealing with the understanding of nature and a broader range of topics, will appear in the journal Foundations of Science. The conference was sponsored by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and Ghent University, which indirectly made this book possible. We also have to thank the other members of the programme committee Marco Panza, Chikara Sasaki, and Erik Weber and our keynote speakers Jens Høyrup, Doug Jesseph, Eberhard Knobloch, Marco Panza, Mathias Schemmel and Michel Serfati. Five of their papers are included in this volume. Most of the papers benefited from valuable and sometimes substantive comments by our referees which must remain anonymous. Special thanks to Michael Barany who assisted in the editorial process