LEADER 04165cam 2200493 i 4500001 on1240263024 003 OCoLC 005 20211105145057.5 008 210219t20212021ilu b 001 0 eng 010 2021007568 020 9780226646985 |qhardcover 020 022664698X |qhardcover 020 |z9780226647036 |qelectronic book 035 (Sirsi) 40030887852 035 40030887852 035 (OCoLC)1240263024 040 ICU/DLC |beng |erda |cDLC |dOCLCO |dYDX |dBDX |dOCLCF |dGK5 |dYDX |dUtOrBLW 042 pcc 050 00 QA21 |b.N574 2021 082 00 510 |223 100 1 Nirenberg, David, |d1964- |eauthor. |=^A376858 245 10 Uncountable : |ba philosophical history of number and humanity from antiquity to the present / |cDavid Nirenberg and Ricardo L. Nirenberg. 264 1 Chicago : |bUniversity of Chicago Press, |c2021. 264 4 |c©2021 300 420 pages ; |c24 cm 336 text |btxt |2rdacontent 337 unmediated |bn |2rdamedia 338 volume |bnc |2rdacarrier 504 Includes bibliographical references and index. 505 0 Introduction: Playing with Pebbles -- World War Crisis -- The Greeks: A Protohistory of Theory -- Plato, Aristotle, and the Future of Western Thought -- Monotheism's Math Problem -- From Descartes to Kant: An Outrageously Succinct History of Philosophy -- What Numbers Need: Or, When Does 2 + 2 = 4? -- Physics (and Poetry): Willing Sameness and Difference -- Axioms of Desire: Economics and the Social Sciences -- Killing Time -- Ethical Conclusions. 520 "From the time of Pythagoras, we have been tempted to treat numbers as the ultimate or only truth. This book tells the history of that habit of thought. But more, it argues that the logic of counting sacrifices much of what makes us human, and that we have a responsibility to match the objects of our attention to the forms of knowledge that do them justice. Humans have extended the insights and methods of number and mathematics to more and more aspects of the world, even to their gods and their religions.Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity.But the rules of mathematics do not strictly apply to many things-from elementary particles to people-in the world.By subjecting such things to the laws of logic and mathematics, we gain some kinds of knowledge, but we also lose others. How do our choices about what parts of the world to subject to the logics of mathematics affect how we live and how we die?This question is rarely asked, but it is urgent, because the sciences built upon those laws now govern so much of our knowledge, from physics to psychology.Number and Knowledge sets out to ask it. In chapters proceeding chronologically from Ancient Greek philosophy and the rise of monotheistic religions to the emergence of modern physics and economics, the book traces how ideals, practices, and habits of thought formed over millennia have turned number into the foundation-stone of human claims to knowledge and certainty.But the book is also a philosophical and poetic exhortation to take responsibility for that history, for the knowledge it has produced, and for the many aspects of the world and of humanity that it ignores or endangers.To understand what can be counted and what can't is to embrace the ethics of purposeful knowing"-- |cProvided by publisher. 650 0 Mathematics |xHistory. |=^A2085 650 0 Mathematics |xSocial aspects. |=^A1429623 650 0 Mathematics |xMoral and ethical aspects. |=^A2085 650 7 Mathematics. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01012163 650 7 Mathematics |xMoral and ethical aspects. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01012210 650 7 Mathematics |xSocial aspects. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01012230 655 7 History. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01411628 700 1 Nirenberg, Ricardo L. |eauthor. |=^A1434670 949 |i30372017343168 |ojjlm 960 |o1 |s30.00 |tJoyner48 |uJAPP |zUSD 596 1 998 5795446