LIT-104: Philosophy of Mathematics from Descartes to Kant

Emily Carson (2026), Cambridge University Press, Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics — DOI-10.1017/9781108982405

Key takeaways

• The early-modern debate over whether metaphysics can be demonstrated with geometric certainty turned on how Euclidean demonstration secures certainty, and the Element traces the answers from Descartes through Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, Lambert and Mendelssohn to Kant.

Seeded from the abstract alone, not a reading. What follows is what the work says about itself.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, philosophers argued over whether metaphysical truths admit the kind of proof that geometrical truths do, and whether they can be known with the same certainty. Settling that comparison required an account of how Euclidean demonstration yields certainty. Carson examines how Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, Lambert, Mendelssohn and Kant handled this question. The focus is on the metaphysical and epistemological status of geometrical demonstration in that period.

Standing in the record

Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 10 seconds of active reading over 1 session. Deferred because nobody has read it closely here yet, not on merit.

Priority for a deeper reading: low — only glanced at (t=10s), paywalled, and peripheral to the batch’s quantum-ontology and structural-realism cluster.

What a deeper reading should check:

• This is history of the philosophy of mathematics. The closed vocabulary has no epistemology or history-of-philosophy topic, so the tags are mathematics (subject matter) plus metaphysics, the only one of the nine that fits and a loose fit. If the record files it, a deeper reader should consider whether the vocabulary wants a word like epistemology.
• It bears on Weyl (LIT-108) and on the mathematics-first strand of structural realism (LIT-151) only at a distance.
• A deeper reading should check how the Element treats Kant’s answer, since it is the culminating figure and the only one named in the keywords.

Access when seeded: The Cambridge Core landing page was reached. It gives the summary, keywords, “Published online … 26 June 2026” and “Print publication: 31 August 2026”. Crossref agrees on the online date but gives print as 2026-07-31, so the print date is inconsistent between sources; I used the online date. The full text is paywalled (“Access options … Element purchase: Temporarily unavailable”) and was not reached.