On mathematical towers of Babel and ``translation as an epistemic category

DOI10.1007/S00283-020-09969-XMaRDI QIDQ2154147zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Michael Friedman

Publication date 14 July 2022

Published in The Mathematical Intelligencer (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-020-09969-x

zbMATH Keywords

descriptive geometryinterpretationsmodels

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 19th century (01A55) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60)

Review text

This interesting paper deals with the following question: did mathematicians in the nineteenth and twentieth century use the term `translation'? The author considers three case studies to answer his question: the first one dates back to the rise of descriptive geometry in the early nineteenth century in France. According to Monge, there was no construction in descriptive geometry that could not be translated into analysis. On the same vein Lagrange claimed that arithmetic results must always be translated into geometric ones, and conversely. The second case study deals with the interpretations of hyperbolic geometry by Beltrami and by Poincaré in the second half of the nineteenth century. The third one focuses on Bourbaki's use of the metaphor of the `Tower of Babel' with respect to the languages of twentieth-century mathematics. Eventually, how `translation' can be interpreted as an epistemic category is discussed by referring to Husserl's and Kuhn's use of this concept.

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Cited in

(5)

• An example of links between mathematics and physics: translatory motion and mathematical translation
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• ``Local-global: the first twenty years
• On metaphors of mathematics: between Blumenberg's nonconceptuality and Grothendieck's waves

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