Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought

Charles R. Crawford, a former associate professor of computer science at
York University, is a computer-programming and mathematics consultant.

This study attempts to trace the connections between mathematics,
mid-19th-century philosophy, and modern writers (particularly those
characterized as postmodern or deconstructionist). The author starts
with Kant and his attitude toward mathematics, then examines the
philosophical writings of late 19th-century mathematicians L.E.J.
Brouwer, David Hilbert, and Hermann Weyl. These mathematicians’ views
are compared with contemporary philosophers who are thought to be
precursors of postmoderns. With this background, Tasic considers those
postmoderns, focusing on Foucault, Sauserre, and Derrida and their views
of the history and present role of science and mathematics.

The mathematicians included here are the ones who created the
mathematics taught today in universities and used by scientists and
engineers. However, in their philosophical writing, they questioned and,
in the case of Brouwer, disavowed the very methods they had created. The
author, a mathematician himself, presents these philosophical views in a
detailed and sympathetic way. He makes a case that they are as important
as their contemporaries in philosophy in providing the background for
postmodern ideas. He is less sympathetic with the views of the
deconstructionists he deals with in the final sections.