| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
xvii, 321 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Bibliography: pages 307-315. |
| Note |
Includes index. |
| Summary |
Discusses the impact that mathematics and computers have on our intellectual and emotional lives. |
| Contents |
This Mathematized World -- Descartes' Dream -- Where the Dream Stands Today -- The Limits of Mathematics -- Are We Drowning in Digits? -- The Stochastized World: A Matter of Style? -- Feedback and Control: The Equilibrium Machine -- Computer Graphics and the Possibility of High Art -- The Social Tyranny of Numbers -- Mathematics and Rhetoric -- The Criterion Makers: Mathematics and Social Policy -- The Computerization of Love -- Testing -- Mathematics as a Social Filter -- A "Marxian" Analysis of the Role of Computing in Organizations -- Cognition and Computation -- The Descriptive, Predictive, and Prescriptive Functions of Applied Mathematics -- The Intellectual Components of Technology, Mathematics and Computation: Four Lists -- Metathinking as a Way of Life -- Three Meanings of Computation -- What Scientific Computation is for -- Why Should I Believe a Computer: Computation as Process and Product -- The Whorfian Hypothesis: Ends and Means in Computer Languages -- The Programming Milieu -- Perspectives Through Time -- Of Time and Mathematics -- Non-Euclidean Geometry and Ethical Relativism -- The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Computers. Are We Hooked? -- Mathematics and Ethics -- Platonic Mathematics Meets Platonic Philosophy of Religion: An Ethical Metaphor -- The Computer Thinks: An Interpretation in the Medieval Mode -- Mathematics and the End of the World -- Personal Meanings -- Mathematics and Imposed Reality -- Loss of Meaning through Intellectual Processes: Mathematical Abstraction -- Envoi. |
| Subject |
Mathematics -- Philosophy.
|
|
Mathematics -- Social aspects.
|
|
Computers and civilization.
|
| Added Author |
Hersh, Reuben, 1927-2020
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Davis, Philip J., 1923- Descartes' dream. 1st ed. San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, c1986 (OCoLC)624470593 |
| ISBN |
0151252602 |
|
9780151252602 |
|
