Publisher's Synopsis
Most mathematicians tend to think of themselves as scientists investigating the features of real mathematical things, and the wildly successful application of mathematics in the physical sciences reinforces this picture of mathematics as an objective study. For philosophers, however, this realism about mathematics raises serious questions. What are mathematical things?, where are they?, how do we know about them? These are questions which many hold to be unanswerable. In "Realism in Mathematics", Penelope Maddy delineates and defends a novel version of mathematical realism. Her goals are to answer the traditional questions, to pose a challenging new one, and to refocus philosophical attention on the pressing foundational issues of contemporary mathematics.
