God, king, and geometry: revisiting the introduction to Cauchy’s Cours d’analyse

This article offers a systematic reading of the introduction to Augustin-Louis Cauchy’s landmark 1821 mathematical textbook, the Cours d’analyse. Despite its emblematic status in the history of mathematical analysis and, indeed, of modern mathematics as a whole, Cauchy’s introduction has been more a source for suggestive quotations than an object of study in its own right. Cauchy’s short mathematical metatext offers a rich snapshot of a scholarly paradigm in transition. A close reading of Cauchy’s writing reveals the complex modalities of the author’s epistemic positioning, particularly with respect to the geometric study of quantities in space, as he struggles to refound the discipline on which he has staked his young career.     

A dialogue on the use of arithmetic in geometry: Van Ceulen’s and Snellius’s Fundamenta Arithmetica et Geometrica

Snellius’s Fundamenta Arithmetica et Geometrica (1615) is much more than a Latin translation of Ludolph van Ceulen’s Arithmetische en Geometrische Fondamenten. Willebrord Snellius both adapted and commented on the Dutch original in his Fundamenta, and thus his Latin version can be read as a dialogue between representatives of two different approaches to mathematics in the early modern period: Snellius’s humanist approach and Van Ceulen’s practitioner’s approach. This article considers the relationship between the Dutch and Latin versions of the text and, in particular, puts some of their statements on the use of numbers in geometry under the microscope. In addition, Snellius’s use of the Fundamenta as an instrument to further his career is explained.     

Die Habilitation von John von Neumann an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin: Urteile über einen ungarisch-jüdischen Mathematiker in Deutschland im Jahr 1927

The mathematician John von Neumann was born in Hungary but principally received his scientific education and socialization in the German science system. He received his Habilitation from the Friedrich-Wilhelms–Universität in Berlin in 1927, where he lectured as a Privatdozent until his emigration to the USA. This article aims at making a contribution to this early part of Neumann’s scientific biography by analyzing in detail the procedure that led to his Habilitation as well as the beginnings of Neumann’s research on functional analysis. An analysis of the relevant sources shows that in Berlin in the year 1927 Neumann was not yet regarded as the outstanding mathematical genius of the 20th century. Furthermore it will be seen that Neumann had great difficulties in developing the fundamental concepts for his path breaking work in spectral theory and only managed to do so with the support of the Berlin mathematician Erhard Schmidt.     

What did Gauss read in the Appendix?

In a clear analogy with spherical geometry, Lambert states that in an “imaginary sphere” the sum of the angles of a triangle would be less than π$\pi$. In this paper we analyze the role played by this imaginary sphere in the development of non-Euclidean geometry, and how it served Gauss as a guide. More precisely, we analyze Gauss’s reading of Bolyai’s Appendix in 1832, five years after the publication of Disquisitiones generales circa superficies curvas, on the assumption that his investigations into the foundations of geometry were aimed at finding, among the surfaces in space, Lambert’s hypothetical imaginary sphere. We also wish to show that the close relation between differential geometry and non-Euclidean geometry is already present in János Bolyai’s Appendix, that is, well before its appearance in Beltrami’s Saggio. From this point of view, one is able to answer certain natural questions about the history of non-Euclidean geometry; for instance, why Gauss decided not to write further on the subject after reading the Appendix.     

Extending and interpreting Post’s programme

Computability theory concerns information with a causal-typically algorithmic-structure. As such, it provides a schematic analysis of many naturally occurring situations. Emil Post was the first to focus on the close relationship between information, coded as real numbers, and its algorithmic infrastructure. Having characterised the close connection between the quantifier type of a real and the Turing jump operation, he looked for more subtle ways in which information entails a particular causal context. Specifically, he wanted to find simple relations on reals which produced richness of local computability-theoretic structure. To this extent, he was not just interested in causal structure as an abstraction, but in the way in which this structure emerges in natural contexts. Post’s programme was the genesis of a more far reaching research project.In this article we will firstly review the history of Post’s programme, and look at two interesting developments of Post’s approach. The first of these developments concerns the extension of the core programme, initially restricted to the Turing structure of the computably enumerable sets of natural numbers, to the Ershov hierarchy of sets. The second looks at how new types of information coming from the recent growth of research into randomness, and the revealing of unexpected new computability-theoretic infrastructure. We will conclude by viewing Post’s programme from a more general perspective. We will look at how algorithmic structure does not just emerge mathematically from information, but how that emergent structure can model the emergence of very basic aspects of the real world.     

A measure-theoretic proof of Turing incomparability

We prove that if S is an ω-model of weak weak König’s lemma and , is incomputable, then there exists , such that A and B are Turing incomparable. This extends a recent result of Ku?era and Slaman who proved that if S₀ is a Scott set (i.e. an ω-model of weak König’s lemma) and A∈S₀, A⊆ω, is incomputable, then there exists B∈S₀, B⊆ω, such that A and B are Turing incomparable.     

Sets versus trial sequences,Hausdorff versus von Mises: “Pure” mathematics prevails in the foundations of probability around 1920

The paper discusses the tension which occurred between the notions of set (with measure) and (trial-) sequence (or—to a certain degree—between nondenumerable and denumerable sets) when used in the foundations of probability theory around 1920. The main mathematical point was the logical need for measures in order to describe general nondiscrete distributions, which had been tentatively introduced before (1919) based on von Mises’s notion of the “Kollektiv.” In the background there was a tension between the standpoints of pure mathematics and “real world probability” (in the words of J.L. Doob) at the time. The discussion and publication in English translation (in Appendix) of two critical letters of November 1919 by the “pure” mathematician Felix Hausdorff to the engineer and applied mathematician Richard von Mises compose about one third of the paper. The article also investigates von Mises’s ill-conceived effort to adopt measures and his misinterpretation of an influential book of Constantin Carathéodory. A short and sketchy look at the subsequent development of the standpoints of the pure and the applied mathematician—here represented by Hausdorff and von Mises—in the probability theory of the 1920s and 1930s concludes the paper.     

Strong normalization results by translation

We prove the strong normalization of full classical natural deduction (i.e. with conjunction, disjunction and permutative conversions) by using a translation into the simply typed λμ-calculus. We also extend Mendler’s result on recursive equations to this system.     

The difficult birth of stochastics: Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi (1713)

Jacob Bernoulli (1654–1705) did most of his research on the mathematics of uncertainty – or stochastics, as he came to call it – between 1684 and 1690. However, the Ars Conjectandi, in which he presented his insights (including the fundamental “Law of Large Numbers”), was printed only in 1713, eight years after his death. The paper studies the sources and the development of Bernoulli's ideas on probability, the reasons behind the delay in publishing and the circumstances under which his masterpiece eventually reached the public.     

How ordinary elimination became Gaussian elimination

Newton, in notes that he would rather not have seen published, described a process for solving simultaneous equations that later authors applied specifically to linear equations. This method — which Euler did not recommend, which Legendre called “ordinary,” and which Gauss called “common” — is now named after Gauss: “Gaussian” elimination. Gauss’s name became associated with elimination through the adoption, by professional computers, of a specialized notation that Gauss devised for his own least-squares calculations. The notation allowed elimination to be viewed as a sequence of arithmetic operations that were repeatedly optimized for hand computing and eventually were described by matrices.     

Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Descartes’ letters (1650–1665)

After Descartes’ death in 1650, Princess Elizabeth generously shared with others several letters she had received from the philosopher, which contained philosophically as well as mathematically exciting material. In this article I place the transmission of these copies in context, revealing that Elizabeth steadily became an intellectually inspiring figure, attracting international attention. In the 1650s she stayed at Heidelberg where she discussed Cartesian philosophy with professors and students alike, including the professor of philosophy and mathematics Johann von Leuneschlos. In the mid-1660s, an initiative was taken from the English side of the Channel (Pell, More) to obtain Descartes’ mathematical letters to Elizabeth that had not yet been published. One letter of Elizabeth herself on this very subject has been preserved. The letter, addressed to Theodore Haak, will be published here for the first time. It is of special interest, because the princess supplies a general outline of her solution to the mathematical problem Descartes gave her to solve in 1643. It substantiates the hypothesis regarding Elizabeth’s solution earlier proposed by Henk Bos.     

Note on witnessed Gödel logics with Delta

Witnessed Gödel logics are based on the interpretation of ∀ (∃) by minimum (maximum) instead of supremum (infimum). Witnessed Gödel logics appear for many practical purposes more suited than usual Gödel logics as the occurrence of proper infima/suprema is practically irrelevant. In this note we characterize witnessed Gödel logics with absoluteness operator △ w.r.t. witnessed Gödel logics using a uniform translation.     

The axiomatic power of Kolmogorov complexity

The famous Gödel incompleteness theorem states that for every consistent, recursive, and sufficiently rich formal theory T there exist true statements that are unprovable in T. Such statements would be natural candidates for being added as axioms, but how can we obtain them? One classical (and well studied) approach is to add to some theory T an axiom that claims the consistency of T  . In this paper we discuss another approach motivated by Chaitin's version of Gödel's theorem where axioms claiming the randomness (or incompressibility) of some strings are probabilistically added, and show that it is not really useful, in the sense that this does not help us prove new interesting theorems. This result answers a question recently asked by Lipton. The situation changes if we take into account the size of the proofs: randomly chosen axioms may help making proofs much shorter (unless NP=PSPACE$\mathrm{NP}=\mathrm{PSPACE}$).     

From anomaly to fundament: Louis Poinsot's theories of the couple in mechanics

In 1803 Louis Poinsot published a textbook on statics, in which he made clear that the subject dealt not only with forces but also with ‘couples’ (his word), pairs of coplanar non-collinear forces equal in magnitude and direction but opposite in sense. His innovation was not understood or even welcomed by some contemporary mathematicians. Later he adapted his theory to put forward a new relationship between rectilinear and rotational motion in dynamics; its reception was more positive, although not always appreciative of the generality. After summarising the creation of these two theories and noting their respective receptions, this paper considers his advocacy of spatial and geometrical thinking in mechanics and the fact that, despite its importance, historians of statics who cover his period usually ignore his theory of couples.     

A modal logic framework for reasoning about comparative distances and topology

We propose and investigate a uniform modal logic framework for reasoning about topology and relative distance in metric and more general distance spaces, thus enabling the comparison and combination of logics from distinct research traditions such as Tarski’s S4 for topological closure and interior, conditional logics, and logics of comparative similarity. This framework is obtained by decomposing the underlying modal-like operators into first-order quantifier patterns. We then show that quite a powerful and natural fragment of the resulting first-order logic can be captured by one binary operator comparing distances between sets and one unary operator distinguishing between realised and limit distances (i.e., between minimum and infimum). Due to its greater expressive power, this logic turns out to behave quite differently from both S4 and conditional logics. We provide finite (Hilbert-style) axiomatisations and ExpTime-completeness proofs for the logics of various classes of distance spaces, in particular metric spaces. But we also show that the logic of the real line (and various other important metric spaces) is not recursively enumerable. This result is proved by an encoding of Diophantine equations.     

Spaces of orders and their Turing degree spectra

We investigate computability theoretic and topological properties of spaces of orders on computable orderable groups. A left order on a group G is a linear order of the domain of G, which is left-invariant under the group operation. Right orders and bi-orders are defined similarly. In particular, we study groups for which the spaces of left orders are homeomorphic to the Cantor set, and their Turing degree spectra contain certain upper cones of degrees. Our approach unifies and extends Sikora’s (2004) [28] investigation of orders on groups in topology and Solomon’s (2002) [31] investigation of these orders in computable algebra. Furthermore, we establish that a computable free group F_n of rank n>1 has a bi-order in every Turing degree.     

Ergodic properties of the Erdös measure, the entropy of the goldenshift, and related problems

We define a two-sided analog of the Erdös measure on the space of two-sided expansions with respect to the powers of the golden ratio, or, equivalently, the Erdös measure on the 2-torus. We construct the transformation (goldenshift) preserving both Erdös and Lebesgue measures on that is the induced automorphism with respect to the ordinary shift (or the corresponding Fibonacci toral automorphism) and proves to be Bernoulli with respect to both measures in question. This provides a direct way to obtain formulas for the entropy dimension of the Erdös measure on the interval, its entropy in the sense of Garsia-Alexander-Zagier and some other results. Besides, we study central measures on the Fibonacci graph, the dynamics of expansions and related questions.With 11 PiguresTo the memory of Paul ErdösSupported in part by the INTAS grant 93-0570. The first author was supported by the French foundation PRO MATHEMATICA. The first author expresses his gratitude to l'Institut de Mathématiques de Luminy for support during his stay in Marseille in 1996-97. The second author is grateful to the University of Stony Brook for support during his visit in February–March 1996 and to the Institute for Advanced studies of Hebrew University for support during his being there in 1997     

The equivalence of bar recursion and open recursion

Several extensions of Gödel's system T$\mathsf{T}$ with new forms of recursion have been designed for the purpose of giving a computational interpretation to classical analysis. One can organise many of these extensions into two groups: those based on bar recursion, which include Spector's original bar recursion, modified bar recursion and the more recent products of selections functions, or those based on open recursion   which in particular include the symmetric Berardi–Bezem–Coquand (BBC) functional. We relate these two groups by showing that both open recursion and the BBC functional are primitive recursively equivalent to a variant of modified bar recursion. Our results, in combination with existing research, essentially complete the classification up to primitive recursive equivalence of those extensions of system T$\mathsf{T}$ used to give a direct computational interpretation to choice principles.     

Why was Wantzel overlooked for a century? The changing importance of an impossibility result

The duplication of a cube and the trisection of an angle are two of the most famous geometric construction problems formulated in ancient Greece. In 1837 Pierre Wantzel (1814–1848) proved that the problems cannot be constructed by ruler and compass. Today he is credited for this contribution in all general treatises of the history of mathematics. However, his proof was hardly noticed by his contemporaries and during the following century his name was almost completely forgotten. In this paper I shall analyze the reasons for this neglect and argue that it was primarily due to the lack of importance attributed to such impossibility results at the time.