Hermann Weyl, The Reluctant Revolutionary

David E. Rowe
Additional contact information
David E. Rowe: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Institut für Mathematik

Chapter 27 in A Richer Picture of Mathematics, 2018, pp 331-341 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract “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.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-67819-1_27

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319678191

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-67819-1_27

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().