HiPhiS Seminar: “The 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 Session: “Causes, Foundations, Origins.”
Presentation by Gilbert Arsac, mathematician, historian, and mathematics educator, Honorary Professor at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1.

Summary:

Around the fourth and third centuries B.C., a transformation in mathematics took place in Greece, culminating in the writing of Euclid’s *Elements*, the most widely read book in the world after the Bible. Its essential originality lies in presenting mathematics as a body of knowledge logically organized through rigorous proofs—a feature found in no other civilization.Around the same time, the Greeks discovered—and here too they were the only ones to do so—the phenomena of incommensurability in geometry and irrationality in the realm of numbers. The presentation will clarify the historical facts and examine what role, if any, internal motivations within mathematics or general philosophical debates in contemporary Greece may have played in these revolutions.
Joint invitation with IMAG – Institut Montpelliérain Alexandre Grothendieck.
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