[maths:backwater-math]

Mathematics as a political backwater

Dialectic of Enlightenment argues that mathematics as a mode of thought is aligned with an uncritical, capitalist notion of progress. The Mathematical Imagination: On the Origins and Promise of Critical Theory argues that this position against mathematics became a general mathematical antagonism between Critical Theory and mathematics, and precipitated the enduring idea that any investment in mathematical abstraction is politically regressive and could lead to outcomes analogous to Nazism.