Emily R. Grosholz's Books

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

By: Emily R. Grosholz,Emily Grosholz

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Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

By: Emily R. Grosholz,Emily Grosholz

Emily Grosholz offers an original investigation of demonstration in mathematics and science, examining how it works and why it is persuasive. Focusing on geometrical demonstration, she shows the roles that representation and ambiguity play in mathematical discovery. She presents a wide range of case studies in mechanics, topology, algebra, logic, and chemistry, from ancient Greece to the present day, but focusing particularly on the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that reductive methods are effective not because they diminish but because they multiply and juxtapose modes of representation. Such problem-solving is, she argues, best understood in terms of Leibnizian 'analysis' - the search for conditions of intelligibility. Discovery and justification are then two aspects of one rational way of proceeding, which produces the mathematician's formal experience. Grosholz defends the importance of iconic, as well as symbolic and indexical, signs in mathematical representation, and argues that pragmatic, as well as syntactic and semantic, considerations are indispensable for mathematical reasoning. By taking a close look at the way results are presented on the page in mathematical (and biological, chemical, and mechanical) texts, she shows that when two or more traditions combine in the service of problem solving, notations and diagrams are sublty altered, multiplied, and juxtaposed, and surrounded by prose in natural language which explains the novel combination. Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous. Grosholtz's arguments, which invoke Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, will be of considerable interest to philosophers and historians of mathematics and science, and also have far-reaching consequences for epistemology and philosophy of language.

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Page Count

332

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199299730

ISBN 13

9780199299737

W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Culture

By: Bernard W. Bell,Emily R. Grosholz,James B. Stewart

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W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Culture

By: Bernard W. Bell,Emily R. Grosholz,James B. Stewart

Interpreting Du Bois' thoughts on race and culture in a broadly philosophical sense, this volume assembles original essays by some of today's leading scholars in a critical dialogue on different important theoretical and practical issues that concerned him throughout his long career: the conundrum of race, the issue of gender equality, and the perplexities of pan-Africanism.

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Page Count

318

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1136048707

ISBN 13

9781136048708

The Abacus of Years

Poems

By: Emily Grosholz

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The Abacus of Years

Poems

By: Emily Grosholz

There are two topics that seem largely unexplored by American poets of our time. One is the deep attachment parents (and perhaps most especially working parents) form for their infants and how they perceive their children (perhaps as Blake saw them) with all the wisdom of their innocence. The second is the relationship of science, mathematics and metaphysics to our everyday life. Here is a book that explores, and to some degree attempts to define, the writer's investigations in those two domains, one stemming from her experience as a mother, the other from her profession as a philosopher of science. And it is this juxtaposition of maternal emotion and detached, almost clinical, analysis that provides Grosholz's wonderful new collection with such grace and such power.

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Page Count

100

Publisher

David R. Godine Publisher

Published Date

ISBN 10

1567921558

ISBN 13

9781567921557

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

By: Emily R. Grosholz,Emily Grosholz

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Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

By: Emily R. Grosholz,Emily Grosholz

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N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

332

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199299730

ISBN 13

9780199299737

Book's by Emily R. Grosholz

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Culture

W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Culture

The Abacus of Years

The Abacus of Years

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences

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