Janet Folina

Professor Folina specializes in the philosophy of mathematics. She also works on the philosophy of science and on the epistemological foundations of science. Her broader philosophical interests include Kant, Wittgenstein, realism-antirealism debates, the concepts of objectivity and normativity, and other topics in 20th-century analytical philosophy. She is the author of Poincaré and the Philosophy of Mathematics. Her current research interests include the philosophy of mathematics of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the concept of proof in mathematics.

 Key publications or presentations:

• Poincare and the Philosophy of Mathematics. London: MacMillan and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
• “Logic and Intuition in Poincare’s Philosophy of Mathematics” (selected papers from International Congress on Henri Poincare). Akademic Verlag and Albert Blanchard, 1996.
• “Putnam, Realism and Truth.” Synthese (1995), 141-152.
• “Church’s Thesis: Prelude to a Proof”, Philosophia Mathematica, Series 3, Vol. 6, 1998.
• “Pictures, Proofs and Mathematical Practice”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1999.
• “Poincaré’s Circularity Arguments for Mathematical Intuition”, The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth Century Science, M. Friedman and A. Nordmann, eds., MIT press, Cambridge, MA, 2006.
• “1790-1870:  Some Developments in the Philosophy of Mathematics”, The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Philosophy, Allen Wood, ed., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
• “Church’s Thesis and the Variety of Mathematical Justifications”, Church’s Thesis After 70 Years, Adam Olzewski ed., Ontos Verlag, 2007.

BA: Williams College, 1982

MPhil: St. Andrews University, 1983

PhD: St. Andrews University, 1986

Please see additional publications in the Faculty Publication Database.