ABSTRACT
In one of his last writings, Gian-Carlo Rota sounds a dramatic alarm for the survival of mathematics. It was the final occasion for continuing his reflection on the value of this discipline, in keeping with a tradition that has vaunted some of the leading mathematicians of the 20th century. This final chapter, inspired by the title of a celebrated text by Poincaré, is an attempt to find in the very perils that threaten mathematics occasions to rethink its value for scientific and philosophic research. In this way we shall have an occasion to return to and investigate more thoroughly some aspects of the phenomenological sense of intentionality that were examined in Section 2.2.
