James Franklin (born 1953 in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

) is an Australian philosopher, mathematician and historian of ideas.

Life and career

Franklin was educated at

St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill , motto_translation = Strive Strive for better things , established = , type = Independent single-sex secondary day and boarding school , educational_authority = New South Wales Department of Educatio ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

. His undergraduate work was at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

(1971–74), where he attended St John's College and he was influenced by philosophers

David Stove David Charles Stove (15 September 1927 – 2 June 1994) was an Australian philosopher. Philosophy His work in philosophy of science included criticisms of David Hume's Inductive scepticism. He offered a positive response to the problem of i ...

and David Armstrong. He completed his PhD in 1981 at the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...

, on

algebraic groups In mathematics, an algebraic group is an algebraic variety endowed with a group structure which is compatible with its structure as an algebraic variety. Thus the study of algebraic groups belongs both to algebraic geometry and group theory. Ma ...

. Since 1981 he has taught in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

. His research areas include the philosophy of mathematics and the ' formal sciences', the

history of probability Probability has a dual aspect: on the one hand the likelihood of hypotheses given the evidence for them, and on the other hand the behavior of stochastic processes such as the throwing of dice or coins. The study of the former is historically olde ...

Australian Catholic The Catholic Church in Australia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the Holy See. From origins as a suppressed, mainly Irish minority in early colonial times, the church has grown ...

history, the parallel between ethics and mathematics, restraint, the quantification of rights in

applied ethics Applied ethics refers to the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadersh ...

, and the analysis of extreme risk. Franklin is the literary executor of David Stove. He is a Fellow of the

Royal Society of New South Wales The Royal Society of New South Wales is a learned society based in Sydney, Australia. The Governor of New South Wales is the vice-regal patron of the Society. The Society was established as the Philosophical Society of Australasia on 27 June 1 ...

History of ideas

His 2001 book, ''The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal'', covered the development of thinking about uncertain evidence over many centuries up to 1650. Its central theme was ancient and medieval work on the law of evidence, which developed concepts like half-proof, similar to modern

proof beyond reasonable doubt Beyond a reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems. It is a higher standard of proof than the balance of probabilities standard commonly used in civil cases, beca ...

, as well as analyses of

aleatory contracts An aleatory contract is a contract where an uncertain event determines the parties' rights and obligations. For example, gambling, wagering, or betting typically use aleatory contracts. Additionally, another very common type of aleatory contract is ...

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

and

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three ele ...

. The book was praised by N.N. Taleb. His polemical history of

Australian philosophy Australian philosophy refers to the philosophical tradition of the people of Australia and of its citizens abroad. Academic philosophy has been mostly pursued in universities (and sometimes seminaries). It has been broadly in the tradition of Anglo ...

, ''Corrupting the Youth'' (2003), praised the Australian realist tradition in philosophy and attacked

postmodernist Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...

and

relativist Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...

trends.

Philosophy of mathematics

In the philosophy of mathematics, Franklin defends an Aristotelian realist theory, according to which mathematics is about certain real features of the world, namely the quantitative and structural features (such as ratios and symmetry). The theory is developed in his 2014 book ''An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Structure''. The theory stands in opposition to both

Platonism Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...

and

nominalism In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings ...

, and emphasises applied mathematics and mathematical modelling as the most philosophically central parts of mathematics. He is the founder of the Sydney School in the

philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people' ...

. Over the years, the School has hosted emerging Australasian researchers and philosophers such as Anne Newstead, Lisa Dive, and Jeremiah Joven Joaquin.

Paul Thagard Paul Richard Thagard (; born 1950) is a Canadian philosopher who specializes in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science and medicine. Thagard is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Waterloo. He i ...

writes that "the current philosophy of mathematics that fits best with what is known about minds and science is James Franklin's Aristotelian realism." In the philosophy of probability, he argues for an objective

Bayesian Thomas Bayes (/beɪz/; c. 1701 – 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister. Bayesian () refers either to a range of concepts and approaches that relate to statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem, or a followe ...

view according to which the relation of evidence to conclusion is strictly a matter of logic. An example is evidence for and against conjectures in pure mathematics. His book ''What Science Knows: And How It Knows It'' develops the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

from an objective Bayesian viewpoint.

Ethics

His work on the parallel between ethics and mathematics received the 2005

Eureka Prize The Eureka Prizes are awarded annually by the Australian Museum, Sydney, to recognise individuals and organizations who have contributed to science and the understanding of science in Australia. They were founded in 1990 following a suggestion b ...

for Research in Ethics. In 1998 he set up and taught for ten years a course on Professional Issues and Ethics in Mathematics at UNSW. He conducted the "Restraint Project", a study of the virtue of temperance or self-control in Australia. In 2008 he set up the Australian Database of Indigenous Violence. His book, ''The Worth of Persons: The Foundation of Ethics'', appeared in 2022.

Philosophy of religion

Franklin has defended Pascal's Wager and

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...

Best of all possible worlds The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" (french: Le meilleur des mondes possibles; german: Die beste aller möglichen Welten) was coined by the German polymath and Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work ''Essais de Th ...

theory, and has discussed

emergentism In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their in ...

as an alternative to materialist atheism and theism.

Australian Catholic history

He is the editor of the ''Journal of the

Australian Catholic Historical Society The Australian Catholic Historical Society discusses Australian Catholic history via a newsletter and meetings, and is focussed around Sydney. Leadership The society was founded in 1940 in Sydney, by a group of students of Australian Catholic h ...

''. His books on Australian Catholic history ar
''Catholic Values and Australian Values''
(2006) an
''The Real Archbishop Mannix''
(2015, with G.O.Nolan and M. Gilchrist). He has written also on the Catholic sexual abuse crisis, Magdalen laundries, missions to Aboriginal Australians, and the virtuous life of Catholic rural communities.

Publications

Franklin has written several books and articles: * 1996 and 2011,
Proof in Mathematics: An Introduction
' , originally published as ''Introduction to Proofs in Mathematics'', in 1988. * 2001, repr. 2015,
The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal
', ; * 2003,

', ; * 2006,
Catholic Values and Australian Realities
', ; * 2007,
Life to the Full: Rights and Social Justice in Australia
', (edited) * 2009,
What Science Knows: And How It Knows It
' * 2014,
An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics
', * 2015,
The Real Archbishop Mannix: From the Sources
', * 2022,
The Worth of Persons: The Foundation of Ethics
', Articles (a selection): * 1982

''Quadrant'' 26 (11):51–60. * 1994,
The formal sciences discover the philosophers’stone
', in: ''Studies in History and Philosophy of Science'', Volume 25, No. 4, 513–533, Elsevier Science Ltd. * 2000, , in: ''The New Criterion'', Volume 18, No. 10, June 2000. * 2000,
Diagrammatic reasoning and modelling in the imagination: the secret weapons of the Scientific Revolution
', in: ''1543 and All That: Image and Word, Change and Continuity in the Proto-Scientific Revolution'', ed. G. Freeland & A. Corones, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 53–115. * 2003
"The representation of context: ideas from artificial intelligence"
in: ''Law, Probability and Risk 2'', 191–199. * 2006,
Chapter on 'Artifice and the natural world: Mathematics, logic, technology'
', in: ''Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Philosophy'', ed. K. Haakonssen, Cambridge, 2006, 817–853. * 2010, The postmodern calculus, ''

New Criterion New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

'' 29 (1) (Sept 2010), 75-80. * 2022
Mathematics, a Core Part of Classical Education
Australian Classical Education Society, (2 July 2022).

References

External links

James Franklin home pageGoogle scholar profilePhilpapers profileAustralian Database of Indigenous Violence
(archived 18 Aug 2020) {{DEFAULTSORT:Franklin, James 1953 births Alumni of the University of Warwick Australian historians Australian philosophers Australian Roman Catholics Historians of mathematics Living people People educated at St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill Philosophers of mathematics Structuralism (philosophy of mathematics) University of New South Wales faculty University of Sydney alumni