Download or read book Philosophy of Geometry from Riemann to Poincar written by R. Torretti and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geometry has fascinated philosophers since the days of Thales and Pythagoras. In the 17th and 18th centuries it provided a paradigm of knowledge after which some thinkers tried to pattern their own metaphysical systems. But after the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries in the 19th century, the nature and scope of geometry became a bone of contention. Philosophical concern with geometry increased in the 1920's after Einstein used Riemannian geometry in his theory of gravitation. During the last fifteen or twenty years, renewed interest in the latter theory -prompted by advances in cosmology -has brought geometry once again to the forefront of philosophical discussion. The issues at stake in the current epistemological debate about geometry can only be understood in the light of history, and, in fact, most recent works on the subject include historical material. In this book, I try to give a selective critical survey of modern philosophy of geometry during its seminal period, which can be said to have begun shortly after 1850 with Riemann's generalized conception of space and to achieve some sort of completion at the turn of the century with Hilbert's axiomatics and Poincare's conventionalism. The philosophy of geometry of Einstein and his contemporaries will be the subject of another book. The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 provides back ground information about the history of science and philosophy.
Download or read book Poincar Philosopher of Science written by María de Paz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-04-11 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a selection of papers from the Poincaré Project of the Center for the Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, bringing together an international group of scholars with new assessments of Henri Poincaré's philosophy of science—both its historical impact on the foundations of science and mathematics, and its relevance to contemporary philosophical inquiry. The work of Poincaré (1854-1912) extends over many fields within mathematics and mathematical physics. But his scientific work was inseparable from his groundbreaking philosophical reflections, and the scientific ferment in which he participated was inseparable from the philosophical controversies in which he played a pre-eminent part. The subsequent history of the mathematical sciences was profoundly influenced by Poincaré’s philosophical analyses of the relations between and among mathematics, logic, and physics, and, more generally, the relations between formal structures and the world of experience. The papers in this collection illuminate Poincaré’s place within his own historical context as well as the implications of his work for ours.
Download or read book Conventionalism written by Yemima Ben-Menahem and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The daring idea that convention - human decision - lies at the root both of necessary truths and much of empirical science reverberates through twentieth-century philosophy, constituting a revolution comparable to Kant's Copernican revolution. This book provides a comprehensive study of Conventionalism. Drawing a distinction between two conventionalist theses, the under-determination of science by empirical fact, and the linguistic account of necessity, Yemima Ben-Menahem traces the evolution of both ideas to their origins in Poincaré's geometric conventionalism. She argues that the radical extrapolations of Poincaré's ideas by later thinkers, including Wittgenstein, Quine, and Carnap, eventually led to the decline of conventionalism. This book provides a fresh perspective on twentieth-century philosophy. Many of the major themes of contemporary philosophy emerge in this book as arising from engagement with the challenge of conventionalism.
Download or read book Poincar s Philosophy written by Elie Zahar and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henri Poincare (1854–1912) was one of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of all time. He founded topology and made important contributions to theoretical physics. Yet despite his numerous achievements Poincare never constructed a systematic philosophy. In this book, Elie Zahar presents Poincare’s work for the first time as a unified system of thought.
Download or read book Poincar and the Philosophy of Mathematics written by Janet M. Folina and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a sympathetic reconstruction of Henri Poincar's anti-realist philosophy of mathematics. Although Poincar is recognized as the greatest mathematician of the late 19th century, his contribution to the philosophy of mathematics is not highly regarded. Many regard his remarks as idiosyncratic, and based upon a misunderstanding of logic and logicism. This book argues that Poincar's critiques are not based on misunderstanding; rather, they are grounded in a coherent and attractive foundation of neo-Kantian constructivism.
Download or read book Henri Poincar written by Jeremy Gray and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at the mathematics, physics, and philosophy of Henri Poincaré Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) was not just one of the most inventive, versatile, and productive mathematicians of all time—he was also a leading physicist who almost won a Nobel Prize for physics and a prominent philosopher of science whose fresh and surprising essays are still in print a century later. The first in-depth and comprehensive look at his many accomplishments, Henri Poincaré explores all the fields that Poincaré touched, the debates sparked by his original investigations, and how his discoveries still contribute to society today. Math historian Jeremy Gray shows that Poincaré's influence was wide-ranging and permanent. His novel interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry challenged contemporary ideas about space, stirred heated discussion, and led to flourishing research. His work in topology began the modern study of the subject, recently highlighted by the successful resolution of the famous Poincaré conjecture. And Poincaré's reformulation of celestial mechanics and discovery of chaotic motion started the modern theory of dynamical systems. In physics, his insights on the Lorentz group preceded Einstein's, and he was the first to indicate that space and time might be fundamentally atomic. Poincaré the public intellectual did not shy away from scientific controversy, and he defended mathematics against the attacks of logicians such as Bertrand Russell, opposed the views of Catholic apologists, and served as an expert witness in probability for the notorious Dreyfus case that polarized France. Richly informed by letters and documents, Henri Poincaré demonstrates how one man's work revolutionized math, science, and the greater world.
Download or read book Science and Hypothesis written by Henri Poincaré and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Einstein s Clocks and Poincare s Maps Empires of Time written by Peter Galison and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-09-14 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Galison's telling of science, the meters and wires and epoxy and solder come alive as characters, along with physicists, engineers, technicians and others . . . Galison has unearthed fascinating material." ("New York Times").
Download or read book The Scientific Legacy of Poincare written by Éric Charpentier and published by American Mathematical Soc.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henri Poincare (1854-1912) was one of the greatest scientists of his time, perhaps the last one to have mastered and expanded almost all areas in mathematics and theoretical physics. In this book, twenty world experts present one part of Poincare's extraordinary work. Each chapter treats one theme, presenting Poincare's approach, and achievements.
Download or read book Henri Poincare A Biography Through The Daily Papers written by Jean-marc Ginoux and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On July 17, 2012, the centenary of Henri Poincaré's death was commemorated; his name being associated with so many fields of knowledge that he was considered as the Last Universalist. In Pure and Applied Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering and Philosophy, his works have had a great impact all over the world. Poincaré acquired in his lifetime such a reputation that, both nationally and internationally, his life and career were made the object of various articles in the daily papers not only in France, but also in the USA. Some of his philosophical concepts have even caused sharp controversies in the Press (as we will discover in this book).This work presents an original portrait of Henri Poincaré based on various press cuttings from The New York Times, The San Francisco Sunday Call, The Times, The Sun, The Washington Post that chronicled unknown anecdotes of his life (for example, his first name was actually not Henri, but Henry; he obtained his high school diploma in sciences with a zero in mathematics, etc.). Such an approach enables the discovering of many forgotten or unknown aspects of his scientific and philosophical works as well as his important role in the public sphere.
Download or read book Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science written by David J. Stump and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, David Stump traces alternative conceptions of the a priori in the philosophy of science and defends a unique position in the current debates over conceptual change and the constitutive elements in science. Stump emphasizes the unique epistemological status of the constitutive elements of scientific theories, constitutive elements being the necessary preconditions that must be assumed in order to conduct a particular scientific inquiry. These constitutive elements, such as logic, mathematics, and even some fundamental laws of nature, were once taken to be a priori knowledge but can change, thus leading to a dynamic or relative a priori. Stump critically examines developments in thinking about constitutive elements in science as a priori knowledge, from Kant’s fixed and absolute a priori to Quine’s holistic empiricism. By examining the relationship between conceptual change and the epistemological status of constitutive elements in science, Stump puts forward an argument that scientific revolutions can be explained and relativism can be avoided without resorting to universals or absolutes.
Download or read book Philosophy of Mathematics written by Thomas Bedürftig and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book is an introduction to the philosophy of mathematics. It asks philosophical questions concerning fundamental concepts, constructions and methods - this is done from the standpoint of mathematical research and teaching. It looks for answers both in mathematics and in the philosophy of mathematics from their beginnings till today. The reference point of the considerations is the introducing of the reals in the 19th century that marked an epochal turn in the foundations of mathematics. In the book problems connected with the concept of a number, with the infinity, the continuum and the infinitely small, with the applicability of mathematics as well as with sets, logic, provability and truth and with the axiomatic approach to mathematics are considered. In Chapter 6 the meaning of infinitesimals to mathematics and to the elements of analysis is presented. The authors of the present book are mathematicians. Their aim is to introduce mathematicians and teachers of mathematics as well as students into the philosophy of mathematics. The book is suitable also for professional philosophers as well as for students of philosophy, just because it approaches philosophy from the side of mathematics. The knowledge of mathematics needed to understand the text is elementary. Reports on historical conceptions. Thinking about today‘s mathematical doing and thinking. Recent developments. Based on the third, revised German edition. For mathematicians - students, teachers, researchers and lecturers - and readersinterested in mathematics and philosophy. Contents On the way to the reals On the history of the philosophy of mathematics On fundamental questions of the philosophy of mathematics Sets and set theories Axiomatic approach and logic Thinking and calculating infinitesimally – First nonstandard steps Retrospection
Download or read book Henri Poincar written by Jeremy Gray and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at the mathematics, physics, and philosophy of Henri Poincaré Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) was not just one of the most inventive, versatile, and productive mathematicians of all time—he was also a leading physicist who almost won a Nobel Prize for physics and a prominent philosopher of science whose fresh and surprising essays are still in print a century later. The first in-depth and comprehensive look at his many accomplishments, Henri Poincaré explores all the fields that Poincaré touched, the debates sparked by his original investigations, and how his discoveries still contribute to society today. Math historian Jeremy Gray shows that Poincaré's influence was wide-ranging and permanent. His novel interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry challenged contemporary ideas about space, stirred heated discussion, and led to flourishing research. His work in topology began the modern study of the subject, recently highlighted by the successful resolution of the famous Poincaré conjecture. And Poincaré's reformulation of celestial mechanics and discovery of chaotic motion started the modern theory of dynamical systems. In physics, his insights on the Lorentz group preceded Einstein's, and he was the first to indicate that space and time might be fundamentally atomic. Poincaré the public intellectual did not shy away from scientific controversy, and he defended mathematics against the attacks of logicians such as Bertrand Russell, opposed the views of Catholic apologists, and served as an expert witness in probability for the notorious Dreyfus case that polarized France. Richly informed by letters and documents, Henri Poincaré demonstrates how one man's work revolutionized math, science, and the greater world.
Download or read book Henri Poincar 1912 2012 written by Bertrand Duplantier and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-14 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thirteenth volume of the Poincaré Seminar Series, Henri Poincaré, 1912-2012, is published on the occasion of the centennial of the death of Henri Poincaré in 1912. It presents a scholarly approach to Poincaré’s genius and creativity in mathematical physics and mathematics. Its five articles are also highly pedagogical, as befits their origin in lectures to a broad scientific audience. Highlights include “Poincaré’s Light” by Olivier Darrigol, a leading historian of science, who uses light as a guiding thread through much of Poincaré ’s physics and philosophy, from the application of his superior mathematical skills and the theory of diffraction to his subsequent reflections on the foundations of electromagnetism and the electrodynamics of moving bodies; the authoritative “Poincaré and the Three-Body Problem” by Alain Chenciner, who offers an exquisitely detailed, hundred-page perspective, peppered with vivid excerpts from citations, on the monumental work of Poincaré on this subject, from the famous (King Oscar’s) 1889 memoir to the foundations of the modern theory of chaos in “Les méthodes nouvelles de la mécanique céleste.” A profoundly original and scholarly presentation of the work by Poincaré on probability theory is given by Laurent Mazliak in “Poincaré’s Odds,” from the incidental first appearance of the word “probability” in Poincaré’s famous 1890 theorem of recurrence for dynamical systems, to his later acceptance of the unavoidability of probability calculus in Science, as developed to a great extent by Emile Borel, Poincaré’s main direct disciple; the article by Francois Béguin, “Henri Poincaré and the Uniformization of Riemann Surfaces,” takes us on a fascinating journey through the six successive versions in twenty-six years of the celebrated uniformization theorem, which exemplifies the Master’s distinctive signature in the foundational fusion of mathematics and physics, on which conformal field theory, string theory and quantum gravity so much depend nowadays; the final chapter, “Harmony and Chaos, On the Figure of Henri Poincaré” by the filmmaker Philippe Worms, describes the homonymous poetical film in which eminent scientists, through mathematical scenes and physical experiments, display their emotional relationship to the often elusive scientific truth and universal “harmony and chaos” in Poincaré’s legacy. This book will be of broad general interest to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers of science and historians.
Download or read book Henri Poincar Electrons to Special Relativity written by Bruce D Popp and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Produced by an award-winning translator of Henri Poincaré, this book contains translations of several seminal articles by Poincaré and discusses the experimental and theoretical investigations of electrons that form their context. In the 1950s, a dispute ignited about the origin of the theory of special relativity and thrust considerable notoriety on a paper written by Henri Poincaré in 1905. Accordingly, Part I presents the relevant translations of Poincaré’s work showing that radiation carries momentum and the covariance of the equations of electrodynamics, the continuity equation for charge, and the spacetime interval. Part II then discusses investigations by Thomson, Becquerel, and Kaufmann of electrons in diverse contexts; contributions of Abraham, Lorentz and Poincaré to a theory of electrons that includes Lorentz transformations and explains the dependence of mass on velocity; and finally, Poincaré’s exploration of the relativity principle, electron stability, and gravitation while rejecting absolute motion (ether) and an electromagnetic origin of mass. Part III contains the 1904 article by H. A. Lorentz presenting his transformations.This book will be a fascinating read to graduate-level students, physicists, and science historians who are interested in the development of electrodynamics and the classical, relativistic theory of electrons at the beginning of the 20th century.
Download or read book The Physicist and the Philosopher written by Jimena Canales and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive debate that transformed our views about time and scientific truth On April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson publicly debated the nature of time. Einstein considered Bergson's theory of time to be a soft, psychological notion, irreconcilable with the quantitative realities of physics. Bergson, who gained fame as a philosopher by arguing that time should not be understood exclusively through the lens of science, criticized Einstein's theory of time for being a metaphysics grafted on to science, one that ignored the intuitive aspects of time. The Physicist and the Philosopher tells the remarkable story of how this explosive debate transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between science and the humanities that persists today. Jimena Canales introduces readers to the revolutionary ideas of Einstein and Bergson, describes how they dramatically collided in Paris, and traces how this clash of worldviews reverberated across the twentieth century. She shows how it provoked responses from figures such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, and carried repercussions for American pragmatism, logical positivism, phenomenology, and quantum mechanics. Canales explains how the new technologies of the period—such as wristwatches, radio, and film—helped to shape people’s conceptions of time and further polarized the public debate. She also discusses how Bergson and Einstein, toward the end of their lives, each reflected on his rival’s legacy—Bergson during the Nazi occupation of Paris and Einstein in the context of the first hydrogen bomb explosion. The Physicist and the Philosopher is a magisterial and revealing account that shows how scientific truth was placed on trial in a divided century marked by a new sense of time.
Download or read book The Value of Science written by Henri Poincare and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Value of ScienceLa Valeur de la ScienceHenri Poincar�The Value of Science (French: La Valeur de la Science) is a book by the French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Henri Poincar�. It was published in 1905. The book deals with questions in the philosophy of science and adds detail to the topics addressed by Poincar�'s previous book, Science and Hypothesis (1902).The search for truth should be the goal of our activities; it is the sole end worthy of them. Doubtless we should first bend our efforts to assuage human suffering, but why? Not to suffer is a negative ideal more surely attained by the annihilation of the world. If we wish more and more to free man from material cares, it is that he may be able to employ the liberty obtained in the study and contemplation of truth.But sometimes truth frightens us. And in fact we know that it is sometimes deceptive, that it is a phantom never showing itself for a moment except to ceaselessly flee, that it must be pursued further and ever further without ever being attained. Yet to work one must stop, as some Greek, Aristotle or another, has said. We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is not more consoling, yea, even more bracing, for illusion it is which gives confidence. When it shall have vanished, will hope remain and shall we have the courage to achieve? Thus would not the horse harnessed to his treadmill refuse to go, were his eyes not bandaged? And then to seek truth it is necessary to be independent, wholly independent. If, on the contrary, we wish to act, to be strong, we should be united. This is why many of us fear truth; we consider it a cause of weakness. Yet truth should not be feared, for it alone is beautiful.
