Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics

This volume contains ten papers that have been collected by the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Socit canadienne dhistoire et de philosophie des mathmatiques. It showcases rigorously-reviewed contemporary scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics from the seventeenth century to the modern era. The volume begins with an exposition of the life and work of Professor Bolesaw Sobociski. It then moves on to cover a collection of topics about twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics, including Fred Sommerss creation of Traditional Formal Logic and Alexander Grothendiecks work as a starting point for discussing analogies between commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. Continuing the focus on the philosophy of mathematics, the next selections discuss the mathematization of biology and address the study of numerical cognition. The volume then moves to discussing various aspects of mathematics education, including Charles Daviess early book on the teaching of mathematics and the use of Gaussian Lemniscates in the classroom. A collection of papers on the history of mathematics in the nineteenth century closes out the volume, presenting a discussion of Gausss Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus and a comparison of the geometric works of Desargues and La Hire. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible not only to mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also to anyone with a general interest in mathematics.