Phil 511: Philosophy of Geometry, Winter 2014

Week Date Topic Readings
1January 7 Course organization and background - Euclid, Bk. I
2January 14 Overview of 19th century mathematics and its philosophy - Detlefsen 1996, Gillies, 1999
- Modernism and mathematics - Gray 2008, Chapter 1
3January 21 No class (Preparation of presentation)
4January 28 Kant and intuition in geometry [Tim Juvshik] - Huggett 1999, Carson 1997
- Before modernism: Philosophy - Gray 2008, Section 2.4
5February 4 Projective geometry [Grace Cherng] - Gray 1987, Lord 2013
- Before modernism: Geometry - Gray 2008, Section 2.1
6February 11 Non-Euclidean geometries [David Gaber] - Gray 2011, Sec 8.3 – Ch. 10
7February 18 Helmholtz [Atoosa Kasirzadeh] - Helmholtz 1876, 1878; Richards 1977
- Mathematical modernism arrives: Modern geometry - Gray 2008, Sec 3.1
8February 25 Psychologism [Jose Larios Derbyshire] - Kusch 1995, Jacquette 2003, Crane 2012
- Philosophy and mathematics in Germany - Gray 2008, Section 4.2
March 4 No class (Reading week)
9March 11 Hilbert's empiricism [Isabella Mariani] - Hilbert 1899, Hilbert/Frege; Corry 2006
- Modernism avowed: Geometry - Gray 2008, Section 4.1
10March 18 Husserl on geometry [Eric Murphy] - Jagnow 2006, da Silva 2012
11March 25 Poincaré's conventionalism [Gabriel Larivière] - Poincaré 1902-08, Stump 1991
- Mathematical modernism and psychology - Gray 2008, Section 6.2
12April 1 Cognitive science of geometry [Rose Liu] - De Cruz 2009, Spelke 2011
13April 8 Visualization in mathematics [Zander Defechereux] - Feferman 2012, Palais 1999, Tall 1999

Last modified: Mon Apr 14 11:01:03 CEST 2014 © Dirk Schlimm