1. A PAREX Workshop on the Sociology of Mathematical Knowledge and the Social History of Mathematics.
- Author
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MacKenzie, Donald
- Subjects
CONFERENCES & conventions ,MATHEMATICS problems & exercises ,SOCIOLOGY of knowledge ,MATHEMATICS education ,HISTORY of sociology - Abstract
This article focuses on a meeting which was held in the Science Studies Unit of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, which discussed the problems of analyzing mathematics from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. The meeting was sponsored by Project PAREX, a European programme of cooperative research in the social studies of science, and by the Science Studies Unit. The proposal for the meeting had arisen from a previous meeting of Project PAREX, held in Regensburg in July 1976, and devoted to "The Social Context of Mathematics: Nineteenth-Century Schools of Thought." The first research paper by David Bloor, attempted to bring together the work in the philosophy of mathematics of Imre Lakatos and that in social anthropology of Mary Douglas. In another research paper, Herbert Mehrtens made use of his research on the history of lattice theory to discuss various substantive and methodological issues in the sociology of mathematics. Sabetai Unguru of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, discussed the historiographic issues arising from his work on Greek mathematics.
- Published
- 1978
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