Subject: [HM] Lobachevskii
From: Jeremy Gray (j.j.gray@open.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Mar 12 2000 - 14:07:08 EST
Dear List members
I cannot confirm the story that Lobachevskii was animated by an anti-Kantian
spirit. Kagan, in his biography of Lobachevskii, shows that under the regime
of Magnitsky, the reactionary in charge of education in Kasan, the great
fear was the example of the French revolution. Lobachevskii’s enthusiasm for
d’Alembert’s views on geometry cost him a publication accordingly. Moreover,
three days after Magnitsky and his puppet Rector fell from power
Lobachevskii gave a public lecture ‘On the principles of geometry, with a
rigorous demonstration of the theory of parallels.’ The manuscript of this
talk is now lost, but later references suggest that it marks the start of
Lobachevskii’s awareness of a non-Euclidean geometry. A. Vassilief, in his
1896 Eloge of Lobachevskii wrote of opposition to Kant’s views in Russia,
and suggests that Lobachevskii could well have known of this. Lobachevskii
came to see geometry as founded on experience, notably that of rigid bodies
in local regions of space, and maybe he thought this way early on. On my
interpretation of Kant (which I think agrees with Michael Friedman’s, to wit
that Kant had no doubt space was Euclidean and was interested in how the
mind came to know that) Lobachevskii would certainly know that he disagreed
with Kant. But what intellectual and political ripples that caused, I cannot
begin to judge. My sense of Lobachevskii was that he was generally
progressive (whatever that might mean). But would opposition to Kant have
been progressive in Lobachevskii’s Russia? Would supporting Kant have been
progressive, for that matter?
Best wishes
Jeremy Gray
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