What is it to have visual intuition? Can we obtain geometrical knowledge by
using visual reasoning? And if we can, is this because we have a faculty of
intuition?
This book addresses these questions. It shows how mainstream philosophers
since Leibniz have wrongly ignored visual reasoning as a source of
knowledge; and how even basic geometrical reasoning that uses diagrams can be
explained without using any appeal to a faculty of intuition. In so doing,
this book helps to rehabilitate an ancient but long-disregarded tradition as
it presents the first detailed philosophical case study of that branch of
mathematical reasoning.
Jesse Norman is honorary research fellow in philosophy at University College
London.
