Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Metaphysics

Solving the Mystery of Mathematics

Jared Warren says, think of a number. What exactly are you thinking of?

Mathematics is mysterious. By this I don’t just mean that there are many difficult, unsolved mathematical questions. I mean instead that mathematics itself, as a subject, and as an activity, is mysterious. Our familiarity with elementary mathematics sometimes lets us lose sight of this. This is probably a good thing most of the time.

…