Mathematics does not describe the world, but faces it

Abstract

In everyday experience mathematics rarely appears to us as a whole, and certainly never as a system in the sense of David Hilbert’s considerations from early 20th Century. Mathematical disciplines seem to be independent and autonomous. We do not see that specific deduction goes beyond particular convention applicable in given discipline. In the late 19th Century this view was shared by Felix Klein and Richard Dedekind. The latter’s work “What are numbers and what should they be?” (Was Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?) was the inspiration for writing this article. This essay is an attempt to see mathematics not as a building, but as a living organism seeking its explanation.