Includes bibliographical references and index

1. Mathematics and the Brain --- 2. Plato as Materialist? --- 3. Nature Made to Order --- 4. The Neuronal Mathematician --- 5. Darwin among the Mathematicians --- 6. Thinking Machines --- 7. The Real and the Rational ---- Epilogue: Ethical Questions

Do numbers and the other objects of mathematics enjoy a timeless existence independent of human minds, or are they the products of cerebral invention? Do we discover them, as Plato supposed and many others have believed since, or do we construct them? Does the physical world actually obey mathematical laws, or does it seem to conform to them simply because physicists have increasingly been able to make mathematical sense of it? Does mathematics constitute a universal language that in principle would permit human beings to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations elsewhere in the universe, or is it merely an earthly language that owes its accidental existence to the peculiar evolution of neuronal networks in our brains? Jean-Pierre Changeux, an internationally renowned neurobiologist, and Alain Connes, one of the most eminent living mathematicians, find themselves deeply divided by these questions. Why order should exist in the world at all, and why it should be comprehensible to human beings, is the question that lies at the heart of these remarkable dialogues

Translation of: Matière à Pensée