Title: How to be a Platonist in mathematics
Speaker: Dr. Ruizhi Yang (School of Philosophy, Fudan University)
Date & Time : 16 November 2015 (Monday), 14:00 – 16:00
Place: Seminar room 259, Main Teaching Building, Xixi campus, Zhejiang University

Abstract: Platonism represents the optimistic aspect of human spirit. This optimism arrived at its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century. The situation turned down sharply afterwards. In mathematics, the search for a foundation was stroked by Russell’s paradox, Godel’s incompleteness theorem, etc. Things went even “worse” after the invention of forcing. I will provide a brief survey of these results, and discuss how can we still be a Platonist without “being ostriches” on the recent developments.