Ludovico Geymonat

Ludovico Geymonat ['dʒeɪ-] (born May 11, 1908 in Barge (Piedmont) , † November 29, 1991 in Rho ) was an Italian philosopher and mathematician. He was a representative of modern philosophy in Italy (philosophy of science and especially philosophy of mathematics, Vienna Circle ) when idealistic philosophy still dominated there.

Life

Geymonat attended a Jesuit college and studied at the University of Turin with a laureate degree in philosophy in 1930 and in mathematics in 1932. As a mathematician, he was a student of Giuseppe Peano and Guido Fubini (from whom he made his laureate). He then spent some time in Vienna, where he had contacts with the Vienna Circle and heard from Moritz Schlick . After his return he published a book in which he made the ideas of the Vienna Circle known in Italy. He then taught philosophy and mathematics at higher private schools in Turin, as his opposition to the fascists did not allow a career at the university. During the Second World War he was in the Italian resistance. From 1946 he gave lectures on the history and philosophy of mathematics at the University of Turin. In 1949 he became an associate professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Cagliari , where he also taught higher mathematics, and then he was professor at the University of Pavia . In 1956 he received the newly created chair of philosophy of science at the University of Milan , where he founded his own philosophical school in Italy (he named his direction in his 1945 book New Rationalism ). In 1978 he retired.

After the war he was a member of the Communist Party of Italy (KPI). When the KPI became the Democratici di Sinistra (DS), he joined the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC). From the late 1960s, his philosophy was increasingly influenced by that of Marxist dialectical materialism. From this a kind of dialectical realism developed, illustrated in his book Scienza e realismo .

His book on the history and philosophy of analysis focuses on the new strict methods of the 19th century, the development of set theory by Georg Cantor and its axiomatization, and concludes with a presentation of Lebesgue integration and modern measure theory . In the 1970s he published an influential nine-volume combined history of philosophy and science, which he largely wrote himself.

In 1985 he was awarded an Antonio Feltrinelli Prize . In 1974 he received the Koyré Medal for his work Storia del pensiero filosofico e scientifico .

Works

• Il problema della conoscenza nel positivismo , Turin: Bocca, 1931
• La nuova filosofia della natura in Germania , Turin: Bocca 1934
• Studi per un nuovo razionalismo , Turin: Chiantore 1945
• Storia e filosofia delli analisi infinitesimali , 1947
• Saggi di filosofia neorazionalistica , Turin: Einaudi 1953
• Galileo Galilei , Turin: Einaudi 1957
• Storio della Matematica , in Nicola Abbagnano (Ed.), Storia della scienza, 1963
• Filosofia e filosofia della scienza , Milan: Feltrinelli 1960
• with Renato Tisato: Filosofia e pedagogia nella storia della civiltà , 3 volumes, Milan 1965
• as editor and author: Storia del pensiero filosofico e scientifico , Milan: Garzanti, 7 volumes, 1970 to 1976
• with Enrico Bellone, Giulio Giorello, Silvano Tagliagambe: Attualità del materialismo dialettico , Rome: Ed. Riuniti 1974
• Scienza e realismo , Milan: Feltrinelli 1977 (German basics of a realistic theory of science)
• with Domenico Constantini: Filosofia della probabilità , Milan: Feltrinelli 1982
• Riflessioni critiche su Kuhn e Popper , Bari: Dedalo 1983
• Lineamenti di filosofia della scienza , Milan: Mondadori 1985 (new edition Turin 2006)
• with Giulio Giorello, Fabio Minazzi: Le ragioni della scienza , Rome, Bari: Laterza 1986
• La libertà , Milan: Rusconi 1988
• La società come milizia (editors Fabio Minazzi, Marcos y Marcos), 1989, new edition Naples 2008
• I sentimenti , Milan: Rusconi 1989
• with Evandro Agazzi, Fabio Minazzi: Filosofia, scienza e verità , Milan 1989
• La Vienna dei paradossi. Controversie filosofiche e scientifiche nel Wiener Kreis (publisher Mario Quaranta), Padua: Il Poligrafo 1991
• with Fabio Minazzi: Dialoghi sulla pace e la libertà , Naples: Cuen 1992
• with Fabio Minazzi, Carlo Sini: La ragione, Casale Monferrato: Piemme 1994

literature

• F. Minazzi: La Passione della Ragione. Studi sul pensiero di Ludovico Geymonat . Mendrisio, Milan 2001.
• Joseph W. Dauben , Christoph J. Scriba (eds.): Writing the history of mathematics , Birkhäuser 2002, p. 433
• Corrado Mangione (Ed.): Ommagio a Ludovico Geymonat. Saggi e testamonianze, Padua 1992
• Francesco Barone, Norberto Bobbio, Pietro Buzano, Gabriele Lolli: Atti Acc. Sci. Torino, Classe Sci. Morali Stor. Fil., Vol. 117, 1993, pp. 73-96 (obituaries)
• Clara Silvia Roero: Ludovico Geymonat, in: Roero (ed.), La facoltà di scienze matematiche fisiche naturali di Torino (1848–1998), Volume 2: I docenti, Turin 1999, pp. 625–628 (with portrait)

Web links

• Literature by and about Ludovico Geymonat in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ Two additional volumes appeared in 1995, edited by Corrado Mangione and Enrico Bellone