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He was a mathematician, not a trained philosopher. One must therefore be careful when reading Poinaré not to misinterpret him as being inconsistent, or not taking philosophy seriously. Indeed many are based on speeches he gave to primarily non-philosophical audiences, and part of their aim was to entertain. Today, however, his papers seem somewhat loose, informal, and at times polemical. He also wrote popular and philosophical works on the foundations of mathematics and science, from which one can sketch a picture of his views.Īs an eminent mathematician, Poincaré’s philosophical views were influential and taken seriously during his lifetime. He was a prolific mathematician, publishing in a wide variety of areas, including analysis, topology, probability, mechanics and mathematical physics. Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) was an important French mathematician, scientist and thinker.
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Rather than time, Poincaré argues for the intuition of indefinite repetition, or iteration, as the main source of extra-logical content in number theory. While defending the same basic vision, Poincaré adapts Kant’s views by rejecting the foundation upon space and time. Kant held that space and time are the forms of experience, and provide the a priori, intuitive sources of mathematical content. His views about intuition descend from Kant, whom Poincaré explicitly defends. Thus, even with respect to applied geometry, where Poincaré is at his most conventional, empirical information is crucial to the choice we make.īalancing the empirical element, there is also a strongly a prior element in Poincaré’s philosophical views for he argued that intuition provides an a priori epistemological foundation for mathematics.
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Along with the desiderata of theoretical simplicity and efficiency, empirical information must inform and guide our choices, including our geometric choices. According to Poincaré, we choose the system based on considerations of simplicity and efficiency given the overall empirical and theoretical situation in which we find ourselves. But the choice of a geometric system is not an arbitrary convention. He advocated conventionalism for some principles of science, most notably for the choice of applied geometry (the geometry that is best paired with physics for an account of reality). His overall philosophy of mathematics is Kantian because he believes that intuition provides a foundation for all of mathematics, including geometry. Most of his publishing was in analysis, topology, probability, mechanics and mathematical physics. He also wrote about science in a simple way that ordinary people could understand.Jules Henri Poincaré was an important French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who was especially known for his conventionalist philosophy.
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He began the branches of mathematics which are known today as chaos theory and topology. He created the Poincaré Conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics which was only solved 100 years later. He gained fame for the discovery of the theory of relativity instead of Poincaré. In some ways he beat the famous scientist Albert Einstein to solving this question, but Einstein gave a more complete answer. He also tried to understand why the speed of light seems to be the fastest speed at which anything can travel in the universe. He was the first person to describe in mathematical terms how three planets in orbit affect each others paths as they pass near by one another. He used his mathematical skills to look at some of the biggest problems in science in his day. He was sick as a child and for many years he had to be taught at home by his mother. He came from a clever family, his father was a professor of medicine and his cousin, Raymond Poincaré became president of France. Many people think he was the last person to understand all branches of mathematics before the subject became too big for anyone to do this. He was described as a "monster of mathematics " when still a child. Jules Henri Poincaré (29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician and scientist. Photograph of Jules Henri Poincaré from the front page of Last Thoughts.