The Necessities Underlying Reality

The Necessities Underlying Reality brings together four decades of work by the leading Australian philosopher, mathematician and historian of ideas, James Franklin. These interlinking essays are connected by a core theme: the necessary structures in reality that allow certain knowledge of absolute truths. Franklins Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics shows how mathematical truths are directly about physical reality, and at the same time certainly and provably true. Ranging from mathematics to evidence evaluation to ethics, his philosophy of probability sees the relation of evidence to hypothesis, such as in science and law, as purely logical, hence necessary. Across ethics and the philosophy of religion, the theme of necessity is repeated: basic ethical truths (such as the worth of persons and the wrongness of murder) are shown to have the same certainty as mathematics. Focus on the history of ideas connects the philosophical work in the present with the medieval scholastic tradition, which defended similar necessities but is now neglected. These carefully selected and edited essays form a coherent introduction to Franklins overall perspective. Recalling Western philosophy to its roots, they reveal the way absolute necessities are discoverable across the abstract fields of mathematics, logical evidence and ethics.