14 APhEx num 14, anno 2016

The book edited by Katrina Hutchison e Fiona Jenkins, Women in Philosophy. What Needs to Change? (2013), aims at examining the following questions: why there are few women philosophers and what are the causes of this gender disparity in philosophy? Are there reasons, beyond those strictly ethical and political, for promoting women’s participation in philosophy? To answer these questions, the articles collected in the book show how gender gap is linked to some philosophical and methodological practices that make this discipline particularly inhospitable to women.

Bernard Bolzano (1781 – 1848) was a Bohemian polymath who made important contributions in philosophy, mathematics, theology, and most of all in what he saw as the foundation of these sciences: logic. He developed a logic based on abstract propositions and ideas in themselves, which enabled him to rigorously define logical concepts such as consequence, validity, and the analytic-synthetic distinction. His unpreceededly extensive writings on scientific explanation inspired and keep inspiring the contemporary debate on grounding. Bolzano presented a definition of the natural numbers in terms of collections akin to Frege's, and his refelections on the mathematical infinite were admired by Peirce, Cantor, and Dedekind.

Daniele Molininiís book offers an introduction to the problem of mathematical explanation, both in mathematics itself and in science. After a historical reconstruction of the notion of mathematical explanation, and a survey of its relations with the notion of scientific explanation, Molinini discusses the many philosophical issues raised by reflection on mathematical explanation in the recent debate, pausing on their connections with the notion of proof, with arguments for mathematical platonism, with the nature of mathematical representation and finally with the several conceptions of the applicability of mathematics.

Social epistemology is the discipline that studies the social aspects involved in the formation and the transmission of belief and knowledge, and also of the social dimension of scientific research. This discipline experienced a great development in the last decades. In this essay, I introduce two ways to classify social epistemology accounts: one distinguishes the theories on the basis of their continuity respect to traditional epistemology, the other one characterizes the accounts on the basis of the kind of epistemic subject they study.

Gerhard Gentzen (1909-1945) is one of the most illustrious mathematical logicians and one of the great figures of the twentieth century. He is the father of the natural deduction calculi and sequent calculi and, thanks to his results, he has succeeded in surmounting (at least partially) the famous goedelian limitative results. This profile aims to describe and illustrate, in the clearest and simplest way, some of the most important Gentzen's contributions, dedicating a particular attention to their philosophical significance.