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(2018) The philosophers and mathematics, Dordrecht, Springer.
Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), one of the most influential philosopher-scientists who was known to the West by the Latinised name Avicenna, has introduced a major shift in the philosophy of mathematics. His conception of number is structured into 5 main conceptual developments: (1) the recognition of mathematical objects as intentional entities and the acknowledgment that this amounts to provide an intentional notion of existence; (2) the link between the intentional act of apprehending unity and the generation of numbers by means of a specific act of repetition made possible by memory; (3) the identification of a specific intentional act that explains how the repetition operator can be performed by an epistemic agent; (4) the development of a notion of aggregate (or constructive set) that assumes an inductive operation for the generation of its elements and an underlying notion of equivalence relation; (5) the claim that plurality and unity should be understood interdependently (we grasp plurality by grasping it as instantiating an invariant).
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-93733-5_13
Full citation:
Tahiri, H. (2018)., The foundations of arithmetic in ibn Sīnā, in H. Tahiri (ed.), The philosophers and mathematics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 297-314.
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