This document discusses different philosophical views of mathematics: - Formalism views mathematics as true or false based only on definitions, but this cannot explain unproven conjectures. - Platonism sees mathematical truths existing independently and discovered through reason, but new geometries challenged this. - Empiricism holds mathematics is generalized from experience, but math has greater certainty than science. Godel's incompleteness theorems showed that for any axiom system, there are true statements not provable within the system, implying mathematics involves more than just applying rules to axioms. Whether mathematics is discovered or created is debated, with some arguing both discovery and creation are involved.

1. ToK - Mathematics
An example of the “axiomatic approach”
from geometry

2. Axioms
• These are assumptions and definitions which can
be used to prove new results
• Axiomatic assumptions do not have to be proved
themselves, because they seem evident, for
example
- Angles on a straight line total two right angles
- All right angles are equal to each other
- Any two points may be joined by a straight
line
• And so on...

3. Using axioms to get new results
(theorems)
a
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•
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b
c
Prove that if a + c = two right angles, then b = c
1 a + c = two right angles (given in the problem)
2 a + b = two right angles (on a straight line)
3 therefore a + c = a + b (law of logic)
4 therefore c = b
(law of logic)
5 therefore b = c
(law of logic)

4. A little philosophy...
• Some propositions (statements which may or
may not be true) actually have to be true by
definition. The “classic” example is “All
bachelors are unmarried”.
• These are known as analytic propositions
• Non-analytic propositions are called synthetic

5. How do we decide if a proposition is true?
• If we can tell that a proposition is true
independent of experience, the proposition is
called true a priori
• If we can only tell that a proposition is true by
means of experience, the proposition is called
true a posteriori

6. Some possible analyses for mathematics
A posteriori
A priori
Analytic
We say that 2 + 2 = 4 ( or II + II = IV,
or whatever symbols you wish to
use) in any situation just because
we have chosen to define arithmetic
in this way.
FORMALISM
IMPOSSIBLE
Synthetic
We say that 2 + 2 = 4 in any situation
because it is an example of something
that we can tell independent of direct
experience but that does not just follow
from the definition.
PLATONISM
We say that 2 + 2 = 4 in any situation
because we have experienced instances of
this truth and have generalised from
there.
EMPIRICISM

7. Some main objections to these views
• Empiricism: when you compare maths to science,
for example, the degree of certainty seems much
greater. Compare a scientific generalisation such
as “all metals expand on heating” to “2n + 2n =
4n, whatever n stands for”.
• Formalism: if mathematical statements are true
or false just by definition, how come there are
statements like Goldbach’s conjecture which we
do not yet know the truth or falsehood of? How
come our definitions have produced results
which describe the real world so well?

8. and Platonism?
• This entails a world view where some truths can
be found by reason alone
• This view suffered a setback in the 18th & 19th
centuries with the discovery of new geometries
apart from the usual Euclidean (flat) type, but
which obeyed the same basic axioms. The new
geometries didn’t seem to describe the world as
well as the original Euclidean type, but still
worked very well within themselves (were
consistent)

10. A bigger problem for formalism
• In 1931, the German logician Kurt Godel
proved two Incompleteness Theorems.
• These very technical proofs considered finding
all the (true) results that could be deduced
from a given set of axioms
• Godel proved that there would always be
some true result which would be omitted
from the list (ie the list would be incomplete)

11. • Godel showed that the result
“This statement cannot be deduced from the
axioms you started with.”
had to be true
• Therefore, however you tried to list all the results
for your axioms, you would never get all the true
statements
• In other words, Maths had to be more than just
applying logical (or illogical!) rules to a set of
axioms and representing the results symbolically

12. Discovered or created?
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What would a formalist say?
What would a Platonist say?
What would an empiricist say?
What do you think?

13. Is “discovery vs creation” a false
dilemma?
• Mathematicians create theories (eg
differential calculus, spherical geometry,
group theory)
• Once the theory is created, the results within
the theory are discovered (eg d/dx (x2) = 2x)
• Therefore Mathematics involves both
discovery and creation