Indiscrete Thoughts

Gian - Carlo Rota

Contents

Foreword by Reuben Hersh

Foreword by Robert Sokolowski

Introduction by Gian-Carlo Rota

Part I. Persons and Places

1. Fine Hall in its Golden Age
   Remembrances of Princeton in the Early Fifties

   Alonzo Church
   William Feller
   Emil Artin
   Solomon Lefschetz

2. Light Shadows
   Yale in the Early Fifties

   Jack Schwartz
   From Princeton to Yale
   Josiah Willard Gibbs
   Yale in the Fifties
   Mathematics at Yale
   Abstraction in Mathematics
   Linear Operators: The Past
   Linear Operators: The Present
   Linear Operators: The Future
   Working with Jack Schwartz

3. Combinatorics, Representation Theory and Invariant Theory
   The Story of a Manage a Trois

   Cambridge 02138 in the Early Fifties
   Alfred Young
   Problem Solvers and Theorizers
   Hermann Grassmann and Exterior Algebra
   Definition and Description in Mathematics
   Bottom Lines

4. The Barrier of Meaning
5. Stan Ulam
6. The Lost Café

Part II. Philosophy: A Minority View

7. The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics Upon Philosophy
8. Philosophy and Computer Science
9. The Phenomenology of Mathematical Truth
10. The Phenomenology of Mathematical Beauty
11. The Phenomenology of Mathematical Proof
12. Syntax, Semantics, and the Problem of the Identity of Mathematical Items
13. The Barber of Seville or the Useless Precaution
14. Kant and Husserl
15. Fundierung as a Logical Concept
16. The Primacy of Identity
17. Three Senses of 'A is B" in Heidegger

Part III Readings and Comments

18. Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught
19. Ten Lessons for the Survival of a Mathematics Department
20. A Mathematician's Gossip
21. Book Reviews

    Paul Halmos: a Life
    The Leading Line of Schaum's Outlines
    Professor Neanderthal's World
    Uses and Misuses of Numbers
    On Reading Collected Papers
    Matroids
    Short Book Reviews

End Notes

Epilogue by Fabrizio Palombi

Index

Copyright © 1996-2008 Alexander Bogomolny