Related papers: Philosophy as a cultural resource and medium of re…

During his whole scientific life Hermann Weyl was fascinated by the interrelation of physical and mathematical theories. From the mid 1920s onward he reflected also on the typical difference between the two epistemic fields and tried to…

During the ``long decade'' of transformation of mathematical physics between 1915 and 1930, H. Weyl interacted with physics in two highly productive phases and contributed to it, among others, by his widely read book on {\em Space - Time -…

H. Weyl's proposal of 1918 for generalizing Riemannian geometry by local scale gauge (later called {\em Weyl geometry}) was motivated by mathematical, philosophical and physical considerations. It was the starting point of his unified field…

During his life Weyl approached the problem of space (PoS) from various sides. Two aspects stand out as permanent features of his different approaches: the {\em unique determination of an affine connection} (i.e., without torsion in the…

Starting from a short review of the "classical" space problem in the sense of the 19th century (Helmholtz -- Lie -- Klein) it is discussed how the challenges posed by special and general relativity to the classical analysis were taken up by…

We revisit Weyl's unified field theory, which arose in 1918, shortly after general relativity was discovered. As is well known, in order to extend the program of geometrization of physics started by Einstein to include the electromagnetic…

Weyl's original scale geometry of 1918 ("purely infinitesimal geometry") was withdrawn by its author from physical theorizing in the early 1920s. It had a comeback in the last third of the 20th century in different contexts: scalar tensor…

In the early phase of general relativity Elie Cartan and Hermann Weyl thought about the question of how the role of transformation groups could be transferred from classical geometry (Erlangen program) to differential geometry. They had…

This essay discusses the development of key geometric ideas in the 19th century which led to the formulation of the concept of an abstract manifold (which was not necessarily tied to an ambient Euclidean space) by Hermann Weyl in 1913. This…

Feyerabend frequently discussed physics. He also referred to the history of the subject when motivating his philosophy of science. Alas, as some examples show, his understanding of physics remained superficial. In this respect, Feyerabend…

In the first attempt to introduce gauge theories in physics, Hermann Weyl, around the 1920s, proposed certain scale transformations to be a fundamental symmetry of nature. Despite the intense use of Weyl symmetry that has been made over the…

Weyl's original scale geometry of 1918 ("purely infinitesimal geometry") was withdrawn from physical theory in the early 1920s. It had a comeback in the last third of the 20th century in different contexts: scalar tensor theories of…

Motivated by an axiomatic approach to characterize space-time it is investigated a reformulation of Einstein's gravity where the pseudo-riemannian geometry is substituted by a Weyl one. It is presented the main properties of the Weyl…

This paper contains a case study of the work and self-definition of two important mathematicians during the rise of modern mathematics: Felx Hausdorff (1868--1942) and Hermann Weyl (1885--1955). The two had strongly diverging positions with…

Pierre van Hiele (1909-2010) suggested, both in 1957 and later repeatedly, wide application for the Van Hiele levels in insight, both for more disciplines and for different subjects in mathematics. David Tall (2013) suggests that Van Hiele…

I argue that Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy -- in particular the doctrine of transcendental idealism which grounds it -- is best understood as an `epistemic' or `metaphilosophical' doctrine. As such it aims to show how one may engage…

Mathematics cannot anymore be assimilated to a linguistic game, where formal proofs are strongly differentiated with conjectural thinking, without building any category of knowledge to understand the passage (Wittgenstein's gist). Nowadays,…

This paper poses some basic questions about instances (hard to find) of a special problem in 3-manifold topology. "Important though the general concepts and propositions may be with the modern industrious passion for axiomatizing and…

Weyl famously argued that if space were discrete, then Euclidean geometry could not hold even approximately. Since then, many philosophers have responded to this argument by advancing alternative accounts of discrete geometry that recover…

The teaching of modern physics often uses the history of physics as a didactic tool. However, as in this process the history of physics is not something studied but used, there is a danger that the history itself will be distorted in, as…