Standard histories of mathematics and of analytic philosophy contend that work on the foundations of mathematics was motivated by a crisis such as the discovery of paradoxes in set theory or the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Recent scholarship, however, casts doubt on the standard histories, opening the way for consideration of an alternative motive for the study of the foundations of mathematics -- unification. Work on foundations has shown that diverse mathematical practices could be integrated into a single framework of axiomatic systems and that much of mathematics could be expressed in a single language. The new framework was the product of an interdisciplinary coalition whose ideas resemble those later adopted by the Vienna Circle and logical empiricists.
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Article published in Perspectives on Science 1997, Vol. 5 No. 3, p383, 35p.
Copyright 1997 by The University of Chicago