On A. Ya. Khinchin's paper `Ideas of intuitionism and the struggle for a subject matter in contemporary mathematics' (1926): a translation with introduction and commentary (Q346664): Difference between revisions

As its title indicates, this paper contains a translation of a 1926 article by the Russian mathematician Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (1894--1959) [``Идеи интуиционизма и борьба за предмет в современной математике'', Vestn. Kommun. Akad. 16, 184--192 (1926)] connected with the debate surrounding the place of intuitionism in mathematics, itself a part of the broader discussion of the foundations of mathematics that took place during the 1920s. Advanced by the Dutch mathematician and philosopher L.~E.~J.~Brouwer (1881--1966), intuitionism views mathematics purely as the result of mental activity, removed from objective reality, and stands in contrast to the formalism espoused by David Hilbert (1862--1943) and others. Khinchin's aim in writing his article of 1926 was to make intuitionism more acceptable to Marxist philosophers by presenting its triumph over `empty' formalism, and thus to demonstrate that modern mathematics is compatible with Marxist thought. The article under review consists of roughly eight pages of translation, with a further 15 of introduction and commentary, in which the authors provide context for Khinchin's writing within the Soviet mathematical community of the 1920s. They also attempt to determine how much of Khinchin's argument was due to political expediency, and how much to genuine philosophical conviction.