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(2018) A richer picture of mathematics, Dordrecht, Springer.
"Brouwer – that is the revolution!" – with these words from his manifesto "On the New Foundations Crisis in Mathematics' (Weyl 1921) Hermann Weyl jumped headlong into ongoing debates concerning the foundations of set theory and analysis. His decision to do so was not taken lightly, knowing that this dramatic gesture was bound to have immense repercussions not only for him, but for many others within the fragile and politically fragmented European mathematical community. Weyl felt sure that modern mathematics was going to undergo massive changes in the near future. By proclaiming a "new" foundations crisis, he implicitly acknowledged that revolutions had transformed mathematics in the past, even uprooting the entire edifice of mathematical knowledge. At the same time he drew a parallel with the "ancient" foundations crisis commonly believed to have been occasioned by the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes, a finding that overturned the Pythagorean worldview that was based on the doctrine "all is Number." In the wake of the Great War that changed European life forever, the Zeitgeist appeared ripe for something similar, but even deeper and more pervasive.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-67819-1_27
Full citation:
Rowe, D. E. (2018). Hermann Weyl, the reluctant revolutionary, in A richer picture of mathematics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 331-341.
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