Assistant Professor of Philosophy Russell Marcus recently published his first book, Autonomy Platonism and the Indispensability Argument.
In the book, Marcus contrasted autonomy Platonism, the view that mathematics is independent of empirical science, and indispensability Platonism, the belief that mathematics is essential to science. He argued against a variety of indispensability arguments and then went on to defend a third approach – intuition-based autonomy Platonism.
In describing intuition-based autonomy Platonism Marcus said, “our mathematical beliefs are justified and that the justification of our mathematical beliefs does not depend on the uses of mathematics in empirical science.”
Reviews on publisher Rowman & Littlefield’s website said the book “is extremely clear and well-written” and called it “a significant contribution to the central debate in contemporary philosophy of mathematics [that] deserves a wide readership.”
