John Craig’s book Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Christian Theology) infuriated contemporaries when it appeared in 1699. Modern scholars also express reservations about the contents. Many read the work in association with Isaac Newton and view Craig’s calculation for the Second Coming in 3150 with bemusement and condescension. Historians of statistics give the book a fairer reading, but often they look to assess the closeness of Craig’s calculations to modern mathematics. In this article, I aim to situate Craig (...) and his book as part of the deist controversy. My goal is to illustrate that the perceived danger of deism in the later seventeenth century was such that it influenced the content of a variety of discourses and that Craig’s work is representative of a moment in which apocalyptic anticipations and anxiety over deism could mix freely with mathematics and conceptions of the historical record in a presentation reminiscent of Isaac Newton’s Principia. (shrink)

In this paper I explore how intellectual humility manifests in mathematical practices. To do this I employ accounts of this virtue as developed by virtue epistemologists in three case studies of mathematical activity. As a contribution to a Topical Collection on virtue theory of mathematical practices this paper explores in how far existing virtue-theoretic frameworks can be applied to a philosophical analysis of mathematical practices. I argue that the individual accounts of intellectual humility are successful at tracking some manifestations of (...) this virtue in mathematical practices and fail to track others. There are two upshots to this. First, the accounts of the intellectual virtues provided by virtue epistemologists are insightful for the development of a virtue theory of mathematical practices but require adjustments in some cases. Second, the case studies reveal dimensions of intellectual humility virtue epistemologists have thus far overlooked in their theoretical reflections. (shrink)