Subject: Re: [HM] Mathematics and Time
From: Judith V. Grabiner (jgrabine@pitzer.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 08 2000 - 14:10:59 EST
Dear Colleagues,
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant said that to determine
the truth of judgments in arithmetic required our pure a
priori intuition of time, in which numbers are constructed.
This, for Kant, proceeded just as the constructions necessary
to make judgments in geometry are made in our pure a priori
intuition of space. Influenced by this, Sir William Rowan
Hamilton, in his work on quaternions, said that algebra was
the science of pure time. Presumably believing that algebra
was about something strengthened his resolve to allow a set of
algebraic objects to be non-commutative.
Judith V. Grabiner
Flora Sanborn Pitzer Professor of Mathematics
Pitzer College (909) 607-3160
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