Subject: [HM] Kant and non-Euclidean geometry
From: Dirk Schlimm (dschlimm@andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 10 2000 - 16:29:14 EST
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, John Conway wrote:
> I think the reason why mathematicians have largely gone off Kant is
> rather that the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry made it clear
> that a theory that implied the necessity of Euclidean geometry was
> just plain wrong.
This reminds me of the following quote I recently came across:
"It is a commonplace of newer Kantian scholarship that he already knew
about non-euclidean geometry from his friend Lambert."
In: Judson Chambers Webb: Tracking contradictions in geometry: the idea of
a model from Kant to Hilbert. p.1. In Jaakko Hintikka, editor, From
Dedekind to Goedel: Essays on the Development of the Foundations of
Mathematics, number 251 in Synthese Library Series, pages 1-20. Kluwer
Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1995.
As I don't know much about newer Kantian scholarship I'd be interested to
know what people on this list think about the above claim.
From Pittsburgh,
Dirk Schlimm
PhD student
Carnegie Mellon University
Department of Philosophy
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~dschlimm
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