Volume 27, Number 17 · November 6, 1980
Crises in Mathematics
By Ernest Nagel
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty
by Morris Kline
Oxford University Press, 366 pp., $19.95
Views concerning how reliable knowledge can be acquired usually reflect the achievements and methods in notably successful branches of inquiry. Newtonian mechanics was widely regarded for more than two hundred years as the paradigm for understanding the constitution of nature; in the nineteenth century, evolutionary biology often served as the model to be followed in the study of psychological and social phenomena; and in our own century, the extensive use of statistical notions in the natural sciences as well as in more recent theories for deciding which one of several possible courses of action is the best has inspired the construction of probabilistic conceptions of knowledge.
Review, 2764 words
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