Article ID: CBB542780608

Cognitive Unity of Thales’ Mathematics (2020)

unapi

The aim of the paper is to argue for the cognitive unity of the mathematical results ascribed by ancient authors to Thales. These results are late ascriptions and so it is difficult to say anything certain about them on philological grounds. I will seek characteristic features of the cognitive unity of the mathematical results ascribed to Thales by comparing them with Galilean physics. This might seem at a first sight a rather unusual move. Nevertheless, I suggest viewing the process of turning geometry into an axiomatic-deductive science as a process of idealization in mathematics that is parallel to the process of idealization in physics. In Kvasz (Acta Phys Slovaca 62:519–614, 2012) I offered an epistemological reconstruction of the process of idealization in physics during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In the present paper I try to employ these epistemological insights in the process of idealization in physics and propose a reconstruction of the cognitive unity of the mathematical results ascribed to Thales, who can, on the basis of these ascriptions, be seen as one of the initiators of idealization in mathematics.

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Authors & Contributors
De Risi, Vincenzo
Welsh, Whitney Elizabeth
Wagner, Roy
Schiefsky, Mark J.
Pisano, Raffaele
Omnès, Roland
Concepts
Mathematics
Geometry
Philosophy of mathematics
Mathematics and its relationship to science
Physics
Philosophy
Time Periods
17th century
Ancient
18th century
Medieval
16th century
Early modern
Places
Greece
Dresden (Germany)
England
France
Ireland
India
Institutions
Staatlicher Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon (Dresden, Germany)
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