Gabriele Lolli is a scholar of logic and mathematics who has always paid special attention to the historical side of these disciplines, writing a large number of lively, popular books. This new essay, as its subtitle suggests, is a broad overview of last centurys philosophies of mathematics: it does not offer the reader an all-encompassing review, including abandoned positions of purely archaeological interest, but instead focuses only on ideas which enjoy widespread acceptance and still play timely roles. For this reason, the text concentrates especially on recent developments. The book is divided into two parts. The first illustrates the goals and the methods of the philosophy of mathematics. The second part thoroughly elucidates - with an abundance of quotations and examples drawn from selected major philosophers in the field - of todays leading approaches: nominalism, realism, Platoism, phenomenology, naturalism, logicalism, formalism, semiotics, constructivism, structuralism, deductivism, fallibilism, empirism, maths as a pattern science, and, finally, spontaneous philosophy.-?

Gabriele Lolli teaches Mathematical Logic at the University of Turin.