ABSTRACT
Durkheim's influence is very directly felt in one of the central contributions to the sociology of mathematics, that of David Bloor. To Bloor, mathematical statements invite a neo-Durkheimian approach, since they are experienced as Durkheimian facts, being external to individuals and endowed with a coercive power. A neo-Durkheimian perspective insists that they are, rather, social facts. Here, Sociologists often draw on Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics, which are seen as demonstrations of the conventional character of mathematics. However, just as there were two different ways of reacting to Durkheim's discovery' of social facts, so there are in the case of Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics. In Wittgenstein, Bloor's sociology of mathematics does not actually add anything to the initial claim that mathematics is social. Bloor sees Wittgenstein as enabling an extension of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge to mathematics. Mannheim famously excluded mathematics from his sociology of knowledge, since the truths of mathematics seem to be eternal, true in all times and places.
