Klein vs Mehrtens: restoring the reputation of a great modern
Journal Title: Математичні Студії - Year 2017, Vol 48, Issue 2
Abstract
Historian Herbert Mehrtens sought to portray the history of turn-of-the-century mathematics as a struggle of modern vs countermodern, led respectively by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Some of Mehrtens' conclusions have been picked up by both historians (Jeremy Gray) and mathematicians (Frank Quinn). We argue that Klein and Hilbert, both at Gottingen, were not adversaries but rather modernist allies in a bid to broaden the scope of mathematics beyond a narrow focus on arithmetized analysis as practiced by the Berlin school. Klein's Gottingen lecture and other texts shed light on Klein's modernism. Hilbert's views on intuition are closer to Klein's views than Mehrtens is willing to allow. Klein and Hilbert were equally interested in the axiomatisation of physics. Among Klein's credits is helping launch the career of Abraham Fraenkel, and advancing the careers of Sophus Lie, Emmy Noether, and Ernst Zermelo, all four surely of impeccable modernist credentials. Mehrtens' unsourced claim that Hilbert was interested in production rather than meaning appears to stem from Mehrtens' marxist leanings. Mehrtens' claim that [the future Brigadefuhrer] Theodor Vahlen... cited Klein's racist distinctions within mathematics, and sharpened them into open antisemitism" fabricates a spurious continuity between the two figures mentioned and is thus an odious misrepresentation of Klein's position.
Authors and Affiliations
J. Bair, P. Blaszczyk, M. Katz, J. P. Schafermeyer, D. Sherry
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP302573
- DOI 10.15330/ms.48.2.189-219
- Views 61
- Downloads 0
Rings with the Kazimirsky condition and rings with projective socle
We construct the theory of diagonalizability for matrices over Bezout rings of stable range 1 with the Kazimirsky condition. It is shown that a ring of stable range 1 with the right (left) Kazimirsky condition is an elem...
Weakly weighted-sharing and uniqueness of homogeneous differential polynomials
In the year 2006, S. Lin and W. Lin introduced the definition of weakly weighted-sharing of meromorphic functions which is between ``CM'' and ``IM''. In this paper, using the notion of weakly weighted-sharing, we study t...
Analysis the solutions of the differential nonlinear equations describing the information spreading process with jump discontinuity
In this paper, we introduce a mathematical model of spreading any type of information. The model has the form of a system of nonlinear differential equations with non-stationary parameters. We have suggested the explicit...
Relative growth of Dirichlet series
Let F and G be entire functions given by Dirichlet series with exponents increasing to +∞. In the term of generalized order it is introduced a concept of their relative growth and its connection with the growth of F and...
Prime ends in the Sobolev mapping theory on Riemann surfaces
We prove criteria for continuous and homeomorphic extension to the boundary of mappings with finite distortion between domains on the Riemann surfaces by prime ends of Caratheodory.