Abstract:

No one denies that social constraints, social pressures, and social prejudices influence the development of science, often in very powerful ways. They have done so in the past and certainly do so today. No one denies that to understand mathematics as a scientific activity, it is absolutely necessary to to find out what real mathematicians actually do and how they communicate about it. (That is somewhat easier to do for the contemporary scene than it is for past centuries or millennia! Unfortunately there is a lot of made-up history written, or at least misinterpreted history.) But does a catalog of these influences and practices, interesting as they might be, tell us what mathematics is as a subject? It is a debate that both mathematicians and logicians should pursue.