Re: [HM] Mengenlehre, a disease from which one has recovered

Tom Archibald (tom.archibald@acadiau.ca)
Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:18:46 +0400

Cantor himself went to some effort to make connections with
ancient and medieval ideas about infinity in his famous series of
papers on set theory. The fifth of these (I mean the one on Math
Ann 21, 545-586) contains lengthy portions on the history of
philosophy.

Poincare' was drafted to translate these into French for Acta
Mathematica by his mentor Hermite. He found them much too
philosophical at the time (as we know from Hermite's
correspondence with Mittag-Leffler, published by Dugac). Poincare's
French versions reorder the material and omit much of the
philosophical discussion, apparently with Cantor's agreement since
the translations were revised by him. See Acta Mathematica v. 2
1883 for Poincare's 27 page version of Cantor's 41 page paper.

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Tom Archibald
Head, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
Acadia University, Wolfville, N. S. B0P 1X0
Tel: 902-585-1475 Fax: 902-585-1074
email: Tom.Archibald@acadiau.ca
Home Page: http://ace.acadiau.ca/MATH/ARCHIBAL/archi1.htm