Erhard Scholz – författare

This contributed volume is the result of a July 2010 workshop at the University of Wuppertal Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies which brought together world-wide experts from physics, philosophy and history, in order to address a set of questions first posed in the 1950s: How do we compare spacetime theories? How do we judge, objectively, which is the “best” theory? Is there even a unique answer to this question?

The goal of the workshop, and of this book, is to contribute to the development of a meta-theory of spacetime theories. Such a meta-theory would reveal insights about specific spacetime theories by distilling their essential similarities and differences, deliver a framework for a class of theories that could be helpful as a blueprint to build other meta-theories, and provide a higher level viewpoint for judging which theory most accurately describes nature. But rather than drawing a map in broad strokes, the focus is on particularly rich regions in the “space of spacetime theories.”

This work will be of interest to physicists, as well as philosophers and historians of science working with or interested in General Relativity and/or Space, Time and Gravitation more generally.

This book, a tribute to historian of mathematics Jeremy Gray, offers an overview of the history of mathematics and its inseparable connection to philosophy and other disciplines. Many different approaches to the study of the history of mathematics have been developed. Understanding this diversity is central to learning about these fields, but very few books deal with their richness and concrete suggestions for the “what, why and how” of these domains of inquiry. The editors and authors approach the basic question of what the history of mathematics is by means of concrete examples. For the “how” question, basic methodological issues are addressed, from the different perspectives of mathematicians and historians. Containing essays by leading scholars, this book provides a multitude of perspectives on mathematics, its role in culture and development, and connections with other sciences, making it an important resource for students and academics in the history and philosophy of mathematics.

"José Ferreirós has written a magisterial account of the history of set theory which is panoramic, balanced, and engaging. Not only does this book synthesize much previous work and provide fresh insights and points of view, but it also features a major innovation, a full-fledged treatment of the emergence of the set-theoretic approach in mathematics from the early nineteenth century. This takes up Part One of the book. Part Two analyzes the crucial developments in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, above all the work of Cantor, but also Dedekind and the interaction between the two. Lastly, Part Three details the development of set theory up to 1950, taking account of foundational questions and the emergence of the modern axiomatization." (Bulletin of Symbolic Logic)

Historical interest and studies of Weyl''s role in the interplay between 20th-century mathematics, physics and philosophy have been increasing since the middle 1980s, triggered by different activities at the occasion of the centenary of his birth in 1985, and are far from being exhausted. The present book takes Weyl''s "Raum - Zeit - Materie" (Space - Time - Matter) as center of concentration and starting field for a broader look at his work. The contributions in the first part of this volume discuss Weyl''s deep involvement in relativity, cosmology and matter theories between the classical unified field theories and quantum physics from the perspective of a creative mind struggling against theories of nature restricted by the view of classical determinism. In the second part of this volume, a broad and detailed introduction is given to Weyl''s work in the mathematical sciences in general and in philosophy. It covers the whole range of Weyl''s mathematical and physical interests: real analysis, complex function theory and Riemann surfaces, elementary ergodic theory, foundations of mathematics, differential geometry, general relativity, Lie groups, quantum mechanics, and number theory.

Band 5 umfaßt die Themenbereiche Astronomie, Optik und Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie. Er enthält Hausdorffs Dissertation über die Refraktion des Lichtes in der Atmosphäre, zwei Folgearbeiten zum gleichen Thema sowie die Habilitationsschrift über die Extinktion des Lichtes in der Atmosphäre. Es folgt eine Arbeit über geometrische Optik, die unmittelbar an die berühmte Publikation von H. Bruns über das Eikonal anschließt und in der Hausdorff die damals ganz neuen Lieschen Theorien für die Optik nutzbar zu machen suchte.

Auf dem Gebiet der Stochastik veröffentlichte Hausdorff zwei längere Arbeiten, die in verschiedenen Bereichen der Versicherungsmathematik und der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung ihre Spuren hinterlassen haben. Von besonderem historischen Interesse sind die im Band publizierten Stücke aus Hausdorffs Nachlaß, etwa seine Vorlesung "Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung" vom Sommersemester 1923 oder seine Briefe an Richard von Mises aus dem Jahre 1919.