Fenner Stanley Tanswell

About me

I am a philosopher at Technische Universität Berlin and a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University.

My first book on “Mathematical Rigour and Informal Proof” is out now Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics series.

My work is on proofs, rigour, mathematical knowledge, virtues, and formalisation. I have an ongoing project to apply ideas from epistemology—like social epistemology, character epistemology and epistemic injustice—in maths and maths education. More recent work has included more experimental philosophy and environmental philosophy.

I have previously worked at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on a project on “Mathematical Values in Data Science”. Before that I have been a Lecturer in Mathematics Education at Loughborough University, and was at the University of St Andrews as an Associate Lecturer. Prior to that I was a postdoc at the University of Oxford on the project “The Social Machines of Mathematics” with Ursula Martin.

I did my PhD on the St Andrews/Stirling joint programme, with a thesis entitled “Proof, Rigour and Informality: A Virtue Account of Mathematical Proof”, supervised by Aaron Cotnoir and Patrick Greenough.

I did the Master of Logic at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and an MA in Philosophy and Mathematics in St Andrews.

Contact: You can contact me at F.Tanswell@lboro.ac.uk or FennerTanswell@gmail.com

News

(March 2024) My first book on “Mathematical Rigour and Informal Proof” is out now Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics series.

(February 2024) I will be giving a keynote talk for the 7th Meeting of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice in Pavia, Italy in June.

(October 2023) Our paper “Comparative judgement for experimental philosophy: A method for assessing ordinary meaning in vehicles in the park cases” is out in Philosophical Psychology (link) with Ben Davies, Ian Jones, and George Kinnear.

(July 2023) Chris Sangwin and I have an article out in the latest issue of the Mathematical Gazette on “Developing new picture proofs that the first n odd integers are squares” (link).

(February 2023) New paper, led by our PhD student Tuya Sa, out in Review of Philosophy and Psychology on “Do Mathematicians Agree about Mathematical Beauty?” (link) with Tuya Sa, Lara Alcock, and Matthew Inglis. Open Access.

(February 2023) New paper for the Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice on “The Language of Proofs: A Philosophical Corpus Linguistics Study of Instructions and Imperatives in Mathematical Texts” (link) (free preprint) with Matthew Inglis.

(November 2022) New paper out in Ethics, Policy and Environment “The Concept of Extinction: Epistemology, Responsibility, and Precaution” (link). Open Access.

(June 2022) New paper out in Educational Studies in Mathematics “Instructions and recipes in mathematical proofs” (link) with Keith Weber.

(Sept 2021) New paper out in Episteme: “Group Knowledge and Mathematical Collaboration: A Philosophical Examination of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups” (link) with Josh Habgood-Coote.