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Henri Poincaré. Science and philosophy: international congress, May 14-18, 1994, Nancy, France. (Henri Poincaré. Science et philosophie: congrès international, mai 14-18, 1994, Nancy, France.) (German, English, French) Zbl 0838.00010

Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Paris: Albert Blanchard, xxx, 598 p. (1996).

Show indexed articles as search result.

The articles of this volume will be reviewed individually.
From the preface: Henri Poincaré took an active part in the discussion of the scientific community at a time when a crucial turn in our world-views began to evolve, an evolution which is still going on. The hitherto much neglected work of this most famous French philosopher-scientist at the turn of this century is today not only topical in mathematics and physics but also in philosophy. For this reason, the Archives – Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche Henri-Poincaré (ACERHP), in association with the Universities of Lorraine and Saar, decided to organise an international congress. Its main objectives were, on the one hand, to draw a general picture of the current research concerning Poincaré’s work, in connection with the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of mathematics of his time; on the other hand, to launch an international co-operation with a view to the “definitive” publication of Poincaré’s scientific correspondence. The congress included two sections together with an additional lecture: the 1994 session of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science (IAPS), whose topic was “Science and Hypothesis”.
The themes of the two sections were: Henri Poincaré’s mathematics and physics (section 1) and Formal sciences and their relationship with the philosophical theories of Pragmatism and Phenomenology generated by Peirce, Poincaré and Husserl (section 2).
Apart from the Congress, three exhibitions took place: the first one presented various manuscripts and papers concerning Poincaré’s life and works; the other exhibited Henri Poincaré’s decorations and medals, together with a large amount of personal belongings; the last one was entitled ‘Konstruieren als Kunst – Art et Mathématiques’. It illustrated a research project directed by Professors Dietfried Gerhardus and Sigurd Rompza (Saarbrücken).
In a commemorative session, the Congress honoured the memory of Professor Jerzy Giedymin who belonged to the foremost representatives of Poincaré studies and to the supporters of the Congress in its planning stage. His premature death which prevented his participation at the Congress has caused a loss deeply felt by scientific community.
Poincaré’s scientific correspondence will be published under the direction of Professors A. Dahan (Paris), D. Goroff (Harvard), J. Gray (London), J.-L. Greffe (Nancy), G. Heinzmann (Nancy), A. I. Miller (London), Ph. Nabonnand (Nancy) and J.-P. Pier (Luxembourg). It will be edited by Blanchard (Paris) and Akademie Verlag (Berlin) with the support of the Archives H.-Poincaré. In a first volume, Ph. Nabonnand comments on the vast correspondence with the Swedish mathematician G. Mittag-Leffler, founder of the Acta mathematica which contains some of Poincaré’s most important contributions. A second volume will enclose the correspondence with physicists.
This first volume of the Congress-Proceedings, contains, among the two sections, 39 lectures which deal explicitly with Poincaré’s work. A second volume, comparable of size, will contain the best contributions which do not connect with Poincaré’s work in detail. It will be published as the first issue of the periodical Philosophia Scientiae – Travaux d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences, founded by the ACERHP. A third volume containing the addresses both of the opening session and of the closing session of the congress which also includes addresses of the J. Giedymin memorial session has been published by the ACERHP.
It was quite impossible to avoid overlapping. Nevertheless, the articles of the present volume have been grouped under three general headings: I. Mathematics and Physics; II. Space, Continuum and Conventions; III. Logic, Intuition and Impredicativity.
In the first chapter, the historical perspective prevails in the analysis of Poincaré’s mathematical and physical work. The merits and the limits of Poincaré in his contributions to the special theory of relativity, as well as his main contributions to topology and to the theory of dynamical systems, are the concern of most of the lectures here. In the other chapters philosophical issues prevail. The common topics of the contributions in these chapters relate to the concepts of space and conventionalism on the one hand and to the position of Poincaré concerning the foundations of mathematics and the foundations of logic on the other hand.
Indexed articles:
Lichnerowicz, André, Mathematics and physics: Poincaré and his heritage, 1-12 [Zbl 0853.01017]
Dahan Dalmédico, Amy, The difficult heritage of Henri Poincaré in dynamical systems, 13-33 [Zbl 0854.01022]
Atten, Michel, Poincaré and the tradition of French mathematical physics, 35-44 [Zbl 0860.01017]
Zahar, Elie, Poincaré’s structural realism and his logic of discovery, 45-68 [Zbl 0853.01018]
Miller, Arthur I., Why did Poincaré not formulate special relativity in 1905?, 69-100 [Zbl 0855.01018]
Paty, Michel, Poincaré and the principle of relativity, 101-143 [Zbl 0853.01019]
Kamlah, Andreas, Poincaré’s philosophy of relativity and geometrical intuition, 145-167 [Zbl 0852.01008]
Schmidt, Heinz-Jürgen, Conventionalism and GTR - Stegmüller on Poincaré, 169-175 [Zbl 0862.01016]
Psillos, Stathis, Poincaré’s conception of mechanical explanation, 177-191 [Zbl 0856.01022]
Gray, Jeremy, Poincaré and electromagnetic theory, 193-208 [Zbl 0856.01021]
Grünbaum, Adolf, Energy conservation and theological misinterpretations of current physical cosmology, 209-230 [Zbl 0863.01008]
Stillwell, John, Poincaré, geometry and topology, 231-240 [Zbl 0854.01023]
Volkert, Klaus, The early history of Poincaré’s Conjecture, 241-250 [Zbl 0854.01024]
Sarkaria, K. S., A look back at Poincaré’s Analysis Situs, 251-258 [Zbl 0851.01003]
Schreiber, Peter, On a constructive property of Poincaré’s model of the hyperbolean plane, 259-263 [Zbl 0854.01025]
Nabonnand, Philippe, Henri Poincaré and the problem of geodesics on a convex surface, 265-276 [Zbl 0860.01018]
Vuillemin, Jules, The representative space after Poincaré, 279-285 [Zbl 0854.01026]
Barreau, Hervé, Poincaré and space-time or an insufficient conventionalism, 287-298 [Zbl 0962.01501]
Bagce, Samet, Poincaré’s philosophy of geometry and its relevance to his philosophy of science, 299-314 [Zbl 0853.01020]
Boi, Luciano, The qualitative conception of mathematics and the epistemological status of the concept of group, 315-332 [Zbl 0853.01021]
Friedman, Michael, Poincaré’s conventionalism and the logical positivists, 333-344 [Zbl 0854.01027]
O’Gorman, F. P., Implicit definitions and formal systems in Poincaré’s geometrical conventionalism: The case revisited, 345-353 [Zbl 0855.01015]
Majer, U., Hilbert’s criticism of Poincaré’s conventionalism, 355-364 [Zbl 0856.01017]
Nowak, Gregory, The concepts of space and continuum in Poincaré’s Analysis Situs, 365-377 [Zbl 0854.01028]
Thiel, Christian, The continuum as a conundrum: Poincaré’s analysis of Cantor’s diagonal procedure, 379-387 [Zbl 0854.01029]
Brenner, Anastasios, The nature of physical hypotheses after Poincaré in the light of the controversy with Duhem, 389-396 [Zbl 0854.01030]
Tieszen, R. L., Logicism, impredicativity, formalism, 399-415 [Zbl 0854.01031]
Folina, Janet, Logic and intuition in Poincaré’s philosophy of mathematics, 417-434 [Zbl 0854.01032]
Chihara, Charles S., Poincaré and logicism, 435-446 [Zbl 0853.01016]
Korhonen, Anssi, Russell and Poincaré on logicism and mathematical logic, 447-458 [Zbl 0853.01022]
Resnik, Michael D., On understanding mathematical proofs, 459-466 [Zbl 0853.01023]
Stenlund, Sören, Poincaré and the limits of formal logic, 467-479 [Zbl 0854.01033]
Stump, David J., Poincaré’s curious role in the formalization of mathematics, 481-492 [Zbl 0853.01024]
Sinaceur, Hourya, Poincaré’s role in the genesis of Hilbert’s metamathematics, 493-511 [Zbl 0854.01034]
Drago, Antonino, Poincaré versus Peano and Hilbert about the mathematical principle of induction, 513-527 [Zbl 0853.01025]
Simmons, Keith, Poincaré and paradox, 528-539 [Zbl 0853.01026]
Powell, Andrew, Poincaré’s concept of structure, 541-549 [Zbl 0853.01027]
Murawski, Roman, Impredicative definitions and reverse mathematics, 551-557 [Zbl 0888.00003]
Epple, Moritz, Mathematical inventions: Poincaré on a ”Wittgensteinian” topic, 559-575 [Zbl 0854.01035]

MSC:

00B25 Proceedings of conferences of miscellaneous specific interest
01-06 Proceedings, conferences, collections, etc. pertaining to history and biography

Biographic References:

Poincaré, Henri
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