NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/sci/math/11446

Text File | 1992-09-14 | 1.6 KB | 35 lines

Newsgroups: sci.math
Path: sparky!uunet!destroyer!ubc-cs!unixg.ubc.ca!ramsay
From: [e-mail] (Keith Ramsay)
Subject: Poincare on Set Theory (was Re: Philosophies...)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Summary: Didn't say it was a disease
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet News Maintenance)
Nntp-Posting-Host: unixg.ubc.ca
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:24:13 GMT
Lines: 21

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Torkel Franzen) writes:
>  This is not historically accurate. Set theory caught on chiefly
>because of its role in the creation and development of such subjects
>as point set topology (which Poincare considered a "disease") and
>measure theory.

I remember reading a debunking of the quote of Poincare. I think the
article was in the Mathematical Intelligencer, but I haven't been able
to find it. The author(s) went looking for the original quote from
Poincare. If I remember correctly, the closest thing they found was a
remark in which he said that the set-theoretic paradoxes were an
interesting challenge, and that the delight of this challenge was like
the delight of a physician, upon treating a particularly interesting
case. It appears that this remark was misquoted by someone and then
repeated. Wasn't Poincare responsible for much of the development of
point-set topology anyway? This is from memory, so if anyone has the
exact reference, please let me/us know.

Keith Ramsay
[e-mail]