Historiographical trends in the social history of mathematics and science

Michael Otte

pp. 295-315

in: Kostas Gavroglu, Jean Christianidis, Efthymios Nicolaidis (eds), Trends in the historiography of science, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstract

In this paper I will attempt to consider the connection between epistemology and the sociology of knowledge by sketching the historical development and I want to show how both come to bear upon, in different ways, similar issues in mathematical and scientific knowledge. Mathematics in fact becomes a touchstone for these attempts as a constructivist epistemology that is pointedly expressed in mathematical cognition, substitutes traditional empiricism, nominalism and behaviorism thereby providing a basis for understanding that connection.