Published in Aberdein, A. & I. Dove (eds.), The Argument of Mathematics. Dordrecht, Springer: 339–60.
Presented at CLPS13 Conference on Logic and Philosophy of Science (Ghent).
Abstract. Because the conclusion of a correct proof follows by necessity from its premises, and is thus independent of the mathematician’s beliefs about that conclusion, understanding how different pieces of mathematical knowledge can be distributed within a larger community is rarely considered an issue in the epistemology of mathematical proofs. In the present paper, we set out to question the received view expressed by the previous sentence. To that end, we study a prime example of collaborative mathematics, namely the Polymath Project, and propose a simple formal model based on epistemic logics to bring out some of the core features of this case-study.
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