HiPhiS Seminar “Origins of Mathematical Proof”

Tuesday, March 28, 2017, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Polytech, Building 31, Serge Peytavin Lecture Hall, Triolet Campus.
Free admission.
Inter-university seminar on the History and Philosophy of Science, 2017 cycle: "Causes, Foundations, Origins."
Lecture presented by Gilbert Arsac, mathematician, historian, and mathematics educator, Honorary Professor at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1.

Summary:

Around the fourth and third centuries BC, a transformation of mathematics took place in Greece, culminating in the writing of Euclid's Elements, the most widely distributed book in the world after the Bible, whose essential originality was to present mathematics as a body of knowledge logically organized through rigorous proofs, something not found in any other civilization.Around the same time, the Greeks discovered, and again they were the only ones to do so, the phenomena of incommensurability in geometry and irrationality in the field of numbers. The presentation will clarify the historical data and examine the possible role played in these revolutions by internal motivations within mathematics or by general philosophical debates in contemporary Greece.
Joint invitation with IMAG – Institut Montpelliérain Alexandre Grothendieck.
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