"Sidelights"

Hartry H. Field once told CA: "A general theme throughout my work is the development of a scientific metaphysics and an account of the place of thought, reasoning, and values within such a metaphysics." Field is a professor of philosophy at New York University, where he teaches courses on logic and the philosophy of logic, metaphysics, causation, and mind and language issues.

Hartry's goal in Science without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism, according to Times Literary Supplement critic Geoffrey Hunter, is to demolish the traditional argument that the existence of mathematical entities is necessary to an understanding of the physical world and to the science of physics. Field's view, Hunter wrote, is "that there is no need to postulate mathematical entities, or to regard mathematical claims about them as true, in order to pursue science."...