Abstract
Among the pre-Socratic philosophers we know that Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno and Democritus were involved in mathematics in one way or another. In fact, Pythagoras coined the very word “mathematics.” Heraclitus does not appear to have occupied himself with mathematical questions; so how can he be said to have influenced modern mathematics? The answer to this question will take us on a small detour.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Crapo, H.: 1977, ‘Unities and Negation: On the Representation of Finite Lattices’, preprint
Eilenberg, S. and S. MacLane: 1945, ‘General Theory of Natural Equivalences’, Trans. Amer. Math Soc. 58, 231–294.
Freyd, P.: 1964, Abelian Categories, Harper and Row, New York.
Kan, D.N.: 1958, ‘Adjoint Functors’, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 87, 294–329.
Kessidi, T.: 1973, Les origines de la dialectique matérialiste (Héraclite), Les éditions du progrès, Moscow.
Lambek, J. and B. A. Rattray: 1979, ‘A General Stone-Gelfand Duality’, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 248, 1–35.
Lawvere, F.W.: 1969, ‘Adjointness in Foundations’, Dialectica 23, 281–296.
Lawvere, F.W.: 1971, ‘Quantifiers and Sheaves’, in Actes du Congrès International des Mathématiciens, Nice 1970, vol. 1, Gauthier-Villars, Paris, pp. 329–334.
Lawvere, F.W.: 1975, ‘Continuously Variable Sets, Algebraic Geometry = Geometric Logic’, Logic Colloquium’73. Proceedings of the Logic Colloquium, Bristol, July 1973,
H.E. Rose and J.C. Shepherdson (eds.) [Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics 80], North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 135–156.
Mao Tse-tung: 1962, ‘On Contradiction’, in An Anthology of His Writings, Mouton, New York.
Russell, B.: 1965, History of Western Philosophy, George Allen and Unwin, London.
Tierney, M.: 1972, ‘Review of A. Kock, “Strong Functors and Monoidal Monads,”’ Math. Reviews 43, 6282.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1981 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lambek, J. (1981). The Influence of Heraclitus on Modern Mathematics. In: Agassi, J., Cohen, R.S. (eds) Scientific Philosophy Today. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 67. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8462-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8462-2_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1263-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-8462-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive