How has mathematics gotten so abstract?
How has mathematics gotten so abstract?What’s the meaning of “numbers” and “arithmetic operations”? We consult Georg Cantor’s turtles and look at Giuseppe Peano’s code.Sep 27, 2025256ShareToday, mathematics is regarded as an abstract science. On forums such as Stack Exchange, trained mathematicians may sneer at newcomers who ask for intuitive explanations of mathematical constructs. Indeed, persistently trying to relate the foundations of math to reality has become the calling card of online cranks.I find this ironic: for millennia, mathematics was essentially a natural science. We had no philosophical explanation why 2 + 2 should be equal to 4; we just looked at what was happening in the real world and tried to capture the rules. The early development of algebra and geometry followed…
