Mathematics has always been part of Western history and tradition, and it has always been closely linked to its culture and its philosophy. We shouldn't forget Plato's Republic, for instance, where it is strongly suggested that philosophers study mathematics in order fully understand the ever changing world. In the sixteenth century, the Tuscan polymath Galileo Galilei claimed that “the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics; without its help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it.” (Pinker 1997, 359). Galileo's greatest contribution was, indeed, the “mathematization” of science. On the other hand, Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza wrote “Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order” (in Latin: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata, 1677), perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the rigorous method of Euclid to philosophy.

The end of the eighteenth century, the age of the Enlightenment, is a dark and pessimistic period for the future of mathematics, though it has been claimed that the entire project of the Enlightenment was to achieve the rigor and the methods of mathematics and apply these everywhere by means of “analytic thinking.” Later, German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who sharply criticized science, believed the character of truth is purely mathematical.