Did Poincaré say ``Set theory is a disease?

DOI10.1007/BF03024067MaRDI QIDQ752679zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Jeremy Gray

Publication date 1991

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

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03024067

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 19th century (01A55) Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies (01A70)

Review text

The author has carefully researched the alleged quotation in the title of the paper, finding that it began with a footnote on the last page of \textit{O. Hölder}'s 1924 book Die mathematische Methode, from which it was picked up by James Pierpoint and reported to the AMS at a meeting in Nashville in 1928. From that point on it became a ``fact widely quoted in both popular and scholarly histories of mathematics. In fact no written record of Poincaré's having made such a remark at the 1908 International Congress (where he is alleged to have done so) exists, and neither Hölder nor Pierpoint was at the Congress.

Recommendations

• Poincaré: Mathematics & Logic & Intuition†
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3869281
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5005838
• On Cantor's continuum problem and well ordering: what really happened at the 1904 International Congress of Mathematicians in Heidelberg
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 756464

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3869281 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3904538 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3724391 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3782930 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3435453 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3999878 (Why is no real title available?)
• On rewriting the history of the foundations of mathematics at the turn of the century

Cited in

(5)

• Hilbert on the infinite: The role of set theory in the evolution of Hilbert's thought
• Poincaré replies to Hilbert: on the future of mathematics ca. 1908
• Book review of Jeremy Gray, Henri Poincaré: a scientific biography
• Poincaré in Göttingen
• Metaphorical reactions in 1932: from the mathematical ‘crisis of intuition’ to ‘reconstruction in the exact sciences’

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