Giovanni Vailati

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Giovanni Vailati

Giovanni Vailati (born April 24, 1863 in Crema , † May 14, 1909 in Rome ) was an Italian mathematician and philosopher .

Life

Vailati went to school in Monza and Lodi (Lombardy) and from 1880 studied at the University of Turin to become an engineer, but also turned to mathematics there and became Enrico D'Ovidio's assistant . In Turin he was also heavily influenced by Giuseppe Peano . In 1884 he graduated as an engineer and in 1888 as a mathematician. He then went back to Lodi, but kept in contact with the Turin mathematicians and in 1892 became Peano's assistant there, which he remained until 1895. He then worked as an assistant at the chair for projective geometry and then assistant to Vito Volterra , where he held a lecture on the history of mechanics from 1896 to 1898. In 1899 he became a teacher in Syracuse , from 1900 in Bari , from 1901 in Como and from 1904 in Florence .

Initially he dealt with mathematical logic under the influence of Peano, then with the history of science and philosophy, where he was close to the pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce and William James and was influenced by the positivism of Ernst Mach . As a science historian, he studied the precursors of Galileo Galilei in mechanics, mechanics in ancient Greece in the succession of Aristotle , the role of mathematical definitions in Plato and Euclid, and the non-Euclidean geometry of Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri , the role of logic in the Philosophy.

He was involved in the organization of the International Congress of Philosophers in Paris in 1900 and then on the organizing committee of the other congresses (1903 in Rome, 1908 in Heidelberg).

He never married. Originally from a Catholic family, he turned away from his religion as a student.

Fonts

  • C. Arrighi, P. Cantù, M. De Zan, Patrick Suppes (Editors): Logic and Pragmatism. Selected Essays by Giovanni Vailati, CSLI, Stanford, California, 2010.
  • Giovanni Vailati Scritti filosofici , 1972
  • Mario Calderoni, Umberto Ricci, Giovanni Vacca (Eds.): Scritti di G. Vailati (1863–1909), Leipzig, Barth; Florence, Seeber, 1911 (972 pp.)

Web links