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Cited by 367

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 7 of the 7 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Why Do We Prove Theorems?

RAV, YEHUDA·1999·Philosophia Mathematica
DOI 10.1093/philmat/7.1.5
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Abstract

Ordinary mathematical proofs—to be distinguished from formal derivations—are the locus of mathematical knowledge. Their epistemic content goes way beyond what is summarised in the form of theorems. Objections are raised against the formalist thesis that every mainstream informal proof can be formalised in some first-order formal system. Foundationalism is at the heart of Hilbert's program and calls for methods of formal logic to prove consistency. On the other hand, ‘systemic cohesiveness’, as proposed here, seeks to explicate why mathematical knowledge is coherent (in an informal sense) and places the problem of reliability within the province of the philosophy of mathematics.

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Metadata

Authors
RAV, Y.
Venue
Philosophia Mathematica
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
1999-02-01
Volume
7
Issue
1
Pages
5-41
ISSN
  • 0031-8019 (ISSN-L)
  • 1744-6406
DOI
10.1093/philmat/7.1.5
OpenAlex
W2320543258
Cited by
367
References
7
FWCI
36.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Why Do We Prove Theorems? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/philmat/7.1.5
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RAV, Y. (1999). Why Do We Prove Theorems? Philosophia Mathematica. https://doi.org/10.1093/philmat/7.1.5

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.