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Indiscrete Thoughts

Gian-Carlo Rota
Publisher: 
Birkhäuser
Publication Date: 
2008
Number of Pages: 
280
Format: 
Paperback
Series: 
Modern Birkhäuser Classics
Price: 
39.95
ISBN: 
978-0-8176-4780-3
Category: 
General
[Reviewed by
Fernando Q. Gouvêa
, on
01/24/2008
]

This is a paperback reprint, in the Modern Birkhäuser Classics series, of a book first published in 1997. It has aged very well, and richly deserves its inclusion in this series. Our original review was very positive, and everything it said is still true. This is an excellent book, fun to read, and interesting to think about.

Foreward by Reuben Hersh.- Foreward by Robert Sokolowski.- Introduction by Gian-Carlo Rota.- Fine Hall in its Golden Age Remembrances of Princeton in the Early Fifties.- Light Shadows Yale in the Early Fifties.- Combinatorics, Representation Theory and Invariant Theory The Story of a Ménage à Trois.- The Barrier of Meaning.- Stan Ulam.- The Lost Café.- The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics Upon Philosophy.- Philosophy and Computer Science.- The Phenomenology of Mathematical Truth.- The Phenomenology of Mathematical Beauty.- The Phenomenology of Mathematical Proof.- Syntax, Semantics, and the Problem of the Identity of Mathematical Items.- The Barber of Seville or the Useless Precaution.- Kant and Husserl.- Fundierung as a Logical Concept.- The Primacy of Identity.- Three Senses of "A is B" in Heidegger.- Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught.- Ten Lessons for the Survival of a Mathematics Department.- A Mathematician’s Gossip.- Book Reviews.- End Notes.- Epilogue by Fabrizion Palombi.- Index