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on Weyl and Cassirer

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Valdusek@aol.com

Posts: 34
Registered: 12/3/04
[HM] Weyl and Cassirer
Posted: Jul 18, 2005 7:03 AM
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After Herman Weyl gave up much of his enthusiasm for Brouwer's intuitionism
he shifted in his later life to a "symbolic construction" view of mathematics
that had some relations to his teacher Hilbert's views, but seem to me to
have some resemblance to Ernst Cassirer's "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms." Given
that Weyl had general interests in culture and a broad and deep knowledge of
history of philosophy and phenomenology, I wondered if Weyl had read Cassirer
and been influenced by him. Is there any reference to Cassirer by Weyl?
I have not found any, but some list members might be aware of one.

Val Dusek
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J.M. Plotkin

Posts: 15
Registered: 12/3/04
Re: [HM] Weyl and Cassirer
Posted: Jul 19, 2005 10:27 AM
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>
>Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:03:39 EDT
>From: Val Dusek <Valdusek@aol.com>
>Subject: [HM] Weyl and Cassirer
>
>After Herman Weyl gave up much of his enthusiasm for Brouwer's intuitionism
>he shifted in his later life to a "symbolic construction" view of mathematics
>that had some relations to his teacher Hilbert's views, but seem to me to
>have some resemblance to Ernst Cassirer's "Philosophy of Symbolic
>Forms." Given that Weyl had general interests in culture and a
>broad and deep knowledge of history of philosophy and
>phenomenology, I wondered if Weyl had read Cassirer and been
>influenced by him. Is there any reference to Cassirer by Weyl?
>
>Val Dusek
>

Weyl's "Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science" (english
trans., Princeton 1949) mentions three books by Cassirer.

Weyl comments on (footnotes in original German text):
Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910), p. 149; Das
Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren
Zeit (1911-1912), p. 216.

Weyl lists Phiosophie der symbolischen Formen (1929) in the
references on p. 217.
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Erhard Scholz

Posts: 4
Registered: 12/3/04
Re: [HM] Weyl and Cassirer
Posted: Jul 19, 2005 10:27 AM
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Dear Val,

there is a late reference of Weyl to Cassirer. You find a passage on
Cassirer's theory of symbolic forms in Weyl "Ueber den Symbolismus der
Mathematik und mathematischen Physik" Studium generale 6 (1953), p. 220;
Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol IV, p. 527.

But I agree with your surprise. I do not know any other reference of
Weyl to Cassirer, which is similarly "long". That is surprising,
because both authors seem to be closer in thinking than such direct
references show.

Does anybody you know something about the other way round: Cassirer
discussing Weyl (there are some references to the foundational debate,
from what I remember also in the Philsophie der symbolischen Formen",
but I have to look it up again"). Cassirer might have felt the affinity
of thought with Weyl.

Erhard Scholz
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