Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:03:39.392Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A geometrical creation myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

John Cable*
Affiliation:
Squirrels Oak Tree Corner, Chichester Close, Witley, Godalming GU8 5PA

Abstract

It has struck me that axiomatic treatments of mathematics resemble the creation myths of primitive religion. In both cases the attempt is being made to provide an ordered account of something that already exists. In the one case the ordering is by deduction; in the other by the temporal sequencing of narrative. By way of illustration I offer a paraphrase of the opening pages of Hubert's Grundlagen in the style of a creation myth.

Of course, I do not use ‘myth’ with any derogatory intention. Nor do I wish to disparage historical attempts from Euclid onwards to present mathematics as a deductive system; indeed I will join the current chorus of regret that this aspect of the subject is now absent from school mathematics. The trouble is to know how best to present axiomatics. It is no longer possible, as it was for Euclid and even for Frege, to suppose that deduction leads back to ‘primitive truths’. One cannot pretend that the mathematics lies wholly in the deduction itself; as Wittgenstein observes, this is like saying that cabinet-making consists in gluing. To say that an axiomatic system is a ‘free creation of the human mind’ does not begin to address the question of purpose and motivation. Perhaps the geometrical deductive systems of Euclid and Hilbert should be seen as conceptual models, designed to make sense of geometrical phenomena, rather as a creation myth is designed to make sense of biophysical phenomena.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1998 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Hilbert, D., Foundations of geometry, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois (1971).Google Scholar
2. Wittgenstein, L., Remarks on the foundations of mathematics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford (1967).Google Scholar