Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Nos.
http://www.jstor.org
I would like to submit this mode of thinking to philosophers, who otherwise often
limit themselves to mathematicaltrivialities, for a considerationof its principles-
Felix Klein. (Klein 1925)
(i)
Ludwig Wittgensteinposed the question,"Whatgroundscan be given in favor of
our presumptionthat the propercontinuationof the "even number"series 2, 4, 6,
8 is 10, ratherthan, e.g., 62?" The tenor of Wittgenstein's discussion suggests
that, however he expected the worries raised by his examples to be dispersed,
their proper"philosophical"solution was not expected to effect the practice of
the working mathematician,anymore than the definitive resolutionof skeptical
doubts about the external world will force new methodology upon subatomic
physics. Within more sophisticatedcontexts, analogousworriesabout the proper
continuationof a mathematicalpractice can assume quite practicaldimensions.
Such cases occur when questions of "the proper setting" for a mathematical
question arise. For example, Leonhard Euler and other early mathematicians
claimed that the "sum" of the series 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 +. . . . ought to be 1/2, an
"howler"for which they are still roundly mocked by writers of the E.T. Bell
school. It is true that the familiarcalculus level approachto infinite summation
pioneeredby A-L. Cauchy does not grantthe Euler series a sum, yet it turnsout
(Hardy 1949) that a variety of generalizednotions of summationexist that fully
ratify the answer "1/2". Viewed retrospectively,these generalized treatments
appear to be "better settings" for the mathematicalcontexts in which Euler
originally employed his series manipulations.It is true that Euler never thought
of these generalized conceptions, but, by the same lights, he never thought of
Cauchy's account either. The Cauchy approachis nowadays "central"in that it
serves as the springboardfor the introductionof the generalizednotions, but this
consideration alone should not force us to evaluate Euler retrospectively as
making mistakes in the summation of series (by the lights of the generalized
notions, Eulerrarelymade errors).
The fact that "better settings" for old mathematical problems can be
uncoveredafter a long period of mathematicaldigestion raises unsettlingdoubts
about mathematicalcertainty.The mathematicianPhillip Davis, in an interesting
article that asks whether any proposition can be definitively established as
"mathematicallyimpossible",writes:
Whenplacedwithinabstractdeductivemathematical
structures,
impossibilitystate-
ments are simply definitions, axioms or theorems .... [But] in mathematicsthere is
a long andvitallyimportant
recordof impossibilities
beingbrokenby the introduc-
tionof structural
changes.Meaningin mathematicsderivesnotfromnakedsymbols
but from the relationshipbetween these symbols and the exterior world.... Insofar
as structures
areaddedto primitiveideasto makethemprecise,flexibilityis lost in
the process.In a numberof ways,then,the closerone comesto an assertionof an
absolute"no",the less is the meaningthatcan be assignedto this "no".(Davis
1987,pp. 176-7)
settings. The "official" position, dominant since the start of this century,
maintains that any self-consistent domain is equally worthy of mathematical
investigation; preference for a given domain is justified only by aesthetic
considerations,personal whim or its potential physical applications.Upon such
grounds, how can the mathematicianwho uncovers the "propersetting" for a
traditional problem be distinguished from the mathematician who simply
changes the topic? How can one give teeth to the conceit that certain mathe-
maticalconcepts (e.g., "ellipticfunction")cry out for particular settingsin which
"they grow and thrive"? With only the tools of the "official" philosophy,
preferencefor "bettersettings"simply devolves to becoming a matterof "I like it
better"or "Isn'tthis pretty?".
What one would ideally like, as an excellent pair of papers by Kenneth
Manders(Manders1987 and 1989) has made clear, is a deeper understandingof
mathematicalconcepts that relates the "meanings"of mathematicalconcepts to
the hiddenfactorsthatdrive disciplines into reconstitutedarrangements,regroup-
ings that in some richer way "better respect" the meanings of the concepts
involved. Although a richer account of mathematics'hidden essentialism seems
desirable, the bare mention of the term "meaning",with all of its attendant
vagaries, readily explains why mathematicians,when pressed about their essen-
tialist claims, frequentlybeat a hasty retreatto the limited verities of theirofficial
"any self consistent formalism is equally worthy of study" philosophy. Yet,
lacking a richeraccount of continuityof meaning throughchange of setting, the
very idea of "mathematicalprogress" falls prey to Davis' worry-is every
mathematicalclaim potentially subject to some reconstitutionof domain that
might reverseour currentestimationof its truth-value?
Let us now turn to what was probablythe most notorious case of "domain
extension"arisingwithin the nineteenthcentury.
(ii)
After 1820, geometry under the lead of Jean-VictorPoncelet grew into a much
stranger subject than could be expected simply from an acquaintance with
schoolbook Euclid. By most standardsof comparison,the world of the so-called
"projective geometer" is considerably more bizarre2 than non-Euclidean
geometryper se. Why? The projectiveschool decided that space should contain
many more points and lines than usual. These extra "extensionelements" stem
from two basic sources:To any plane, one adds extra points located along a line
at infinity and also a full complementof "imaginarypoints" whose coordinates
are allowed to be complex numbers.3Most of these imaginarypoints don't even
have the grace to hide away at infinity; some of them hover at ratherpeculiar
nearbydistances.
The additionof these extra elements would be unproblematicif they merely
served as technical devices to streamline proofs pertaining to the original
The points "at infinity"are introducedas a convenience to make simpler and more
elegant the theoryof the things you really care about. (Benacerraf1989b, p. 406)
Planes, straightlines, and points are the entities about which certain postulates are
made but which are otherwise undefined. Hence, we can give the name "point"to
anything which conforms to our postulates about points and which suits our
convenience to designate as "point". In short, all our geometry (indeed, all our
mathematics)deals with constructsof our imagination;and an "ideal"point is on
precisely the same footing, from this point of view, as an "ordinary"point.
But it is hard to see from this response why the projective additions are
especially "natural"to geometry; why shouldn't we instead add inaccessible
cardinalsor pineapples to Euclid? Such a weak apology for the extension ele-
ments leaves one wide open to Phillip Davis' kind of worry.One might dress up
Rosenbaum's answer somewhat, but most modem defenses of the extension
elements come down to being simply a matter of "the projective changes are
particularlypretty"or the like.
I don't pretend to have a better answer to such worries myself, but many
nineteenth century mathematiciansthought that they did. A variety of rather
sophisticatedattemptsto rationalizethe changes in geometry were set forth. For
various historical reasons, most of us today are unaware of these discussions,
their importancehaving been pushed out of view by the later debates over non-
Euclideangeometry. But the controversyover the projectiverevisions is philo-
sophicallyjust as interestingas the non-Euclideanchallenge, althoughcompletely
differentin character.The question was not whetherestablishedEuclideantheo-
rems of geometrycould be reversedby an empiricallyconfirmablenon-Euclidean
competitor, but whether internal factors might drive Euclidean geometry to
reconstitute itself within a richer domain of objects in which various older
theorems fail. The projective threat to Euclidean certainty came from within,
ratherthanfrom without.
The central purpose of this paper is to show that Gottlob Frege's celebrated
logicism grew up in the shadow of these debates and that the more obscureparts
of his philosophy-his context principle,for example-can be betterunderstood
when viewed in this geometricalperspective.Frege's context principle,by way
of reminder,is:
[Never] ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a
proposition... It is enough if the propositiontaken as a whole has a sense; it is this
thatconfers on its partsalso theircontent. (Frege 1884, p. 72)
This is one of those slogans that have deeply influenced a lot of famous later
philosophers,althoughfew of them seem to agree upon what it means!
In any case, the linkage between Frege and geometry is scarcely made
obvious within Frege's betterknown writings.However, Frege did much work in
complexified projective geometry and was undoubtedlyfamiliar with the doc-
trines outlined here. I'll attemptto tell a story here that links the philosophical
traditionsin geometryto Frege's publishedopinions.
(iii)
Let us first ask what factors led geometers to place Euclidean geometry in its
strange projective setting? We will concentrate upon the complex extension
points (which are the most interesting).The original impetus for adding these
came from the successes of analytic geometry in the fashion of Descartes. Here
Figure 1
1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1
F 2e Pole
Figure 2
Figure 3
Pole
Figure4
And
It is far too much the custom now to rely on the analogy of algebra to justify the
introductionof imaginaries into geometry. Analogy, however, is no justification
unless we first prove the exact correspondenceof the fields of investigation. In
analytical geometry the identificationof the two fields is permissible, and is easily
explained; but in pure geometry any reference to algebra, expressed or implied, is
irrelevantand misleading.(Scott 1900b, p. 307)
That is, formulas like "x2 + (y-1)2 = 26" carry two distinct interpretations:(i)
they are "about"circles and (ii) they are "about"the relationship of various
number pairs <x,y>. The steps in our Cartesiancalculation are quite unexcep-
tionable interpretedover the field of complex numbers,so if geometricalinter-
pretationis eschewed, there is no danger of unsoundness.It is only under the
geometricalinterpretationthat the reasoningappearsunsound.Scott's complaint
is thatthese two interpretationswere often confused8.
(iv)
Duringthe nineteenthcentury,severalnoteworthyattemptswere made to explain
the successes of the Cartesiancalculationsin exclusively geometricalterms.The
first was due to the great originatorof projectivegeometry, Poncelet. He agreed
that the Cartesian achievements revealed a deep unity in our two cases but
denied that this unity traced to any "universalityof algebra".Rather he gave
4- 5
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
following the law of continuityin the same spirit as the existence of parallelsis
posited in Euclid. The accidental tie to numericalrealms exploited in analytic
geometryshouldbe avoided as an unnecessarydiversion.
Note that the "principleof continuity" supplies an answer to the dilemma
discussed at the startof this paper.Whateverits shortcomingsin termsof clarity,
the "continuity"principle representsthe new projective elements as the natural
outgrowth of the domain of traditionalgeometry. This "organic"connection
through"continuity"gives one the right, thoughtPoncelet, to claim that the new
extension elements representthe correct extension of Euclidean geometry. The
new elements are added to complete the mechanism that makes Euclidean
geometry work. Accordingly, the "ideal" elements are "just as real" as the
original elements of geometry, even though we can form no visual picture of
what the imaginaryelements look like (of course, nineteenthcenturywriterslike
Frege would have expressed this claim as: "we can form no intuition of the
imaginaryelements").
(v)
So much for Poncelet. Between 1847 and 1860, the Germangeometer G.K.C.
von Staudtbroughta new perspectiveto the dilemma of the extension elements
(von Staudt 1847 and 1856). Ratherthan postulatingnew entities in Poncelet's
manner,von Staudtelected to define the extension elements in termsof accepted
Euclideanideas, so thatcomplexified projectivegeometrywould standsimply as
an extension by definitions of the old field. This idea alone would not be novel;
von Staudt's originality lay in the particularstrategy he followed in achieving
this end. Since there are no regular Euclidean objects that can adequately
substitute for the complex points, von Staudt was forced to rely upon some
unexpectedmaterials.In fact, he selected abstractconcepts to supplythe missing
material.His reasoningwent roughlyas follows:
"We are familiar with cases where assertionsabout concepts or relationsare
accordedwith an object-likestatus,as when we say "Personhoodis possessed by
Socrates", ratherthan "Socrates is a person". Consider "personhood"to be a
concept-objectderived from the concept "is a person".From this point of view,
consider the innocent-looking claim: "Line L has the overlapping involution
(defined by xx'=-10) on it". Once again, we have convertedwhat is essentially a
relation ("x maps to x' by the rule xx' =-10") into a "concept-object""the
involutionon L defined by xx'=-10". Recall that Poncelet postulatednew points
to correspondto the missing "fixed points"of such a relationon the groundsthat
the involution relation "persists"along the line althoughits normalfixed points
vanish. But ratherthan following Poncelet and viewing this process as one of
postulation, why not simply define the desired imaginarypoints as the concept-
objects denotedby phraseslike "theinvolutionon L"?"
This is von Staudt's basic idea but, strictly speaking, it doesn't quite work.
We actually need to constructtwo imaginarypoints from every involution along
a line (each involution has two fixed points, albeit occasionally "double"ones).
this initial set of definitions. All of the notions utilized in projective geometry
must be redefined and its theorems shown to be transcriptions,under the
definitions, of regular Euclidean statements (albeit involving concept-objects).
Thus von Staudthad to redefine what a line is (to allow for the imaginaryones)
and then to redefine "lies upon".Armed with such definitions, claims like "two
points always lie upon some line" needed to be proven, even though, in the
originalEuclideanrealm,this propositionis an axiom.
(vi)
Time and time again we are led by our thoughtbeyond the scope of our imagination,
without therebyforfeiting the supportwe need for our inferences.Even if, as seems
to be the case, it is impossible for men such as we to think without-ideas, it is still
possible for their connection with what we are thinkingof to be entirely superficial,
arbitraryand conventional.(Frege 1884, p. 72)
(vii)
These geometrical considerationsgive us some sense of the freedom to rework
preexisting mathematicsthat Frege wished to defend. This freedom supplies a
way of legitimating the projective revisions without destroying geometry's
claims to permanenceand certainty.Let's now turnto Frege's own work on the
classical numbersystems.
(viii)
But if numbers are concept-objects induced in the von Staudt manner over
appropriatefamilies of relations,this confusion about"contextualdefinition"can
be sortedout. That Frege has the von Staudtanalogy in mind is suggestedby the
statementhe providesof his overall objectives:
What does this have to do with his account of numbers? In von Staudt's
treatmentof geometry, our logical ability to reconstitutejudgments in terms of
concept-objectsreally does give the appearanceof pulling invisible points out of
empty air. Assimilating Frege's treatmentof numberto von Staudt's approach,
Frege's radical metaphors begin to seem more appropriate.Certainly, von
Staudt's trick of granting abstractconcept-objects such as "the direction of a
line" with the same mathematical"reality"as points at infinity was widely
regarded,in mid-nineteenthcentury,as a mathematicalgambit "borderingupon
impudence"17.Frege liked the gambit, and used it for his numbers,but in the
numericalcontext the shock value of the move was greatly diminished.Only by
recognizing that Frege's "directions"are really "points at infinity" can one
regainan appreciationof the radicalwork thatthe context principlewas meantto
accomplishwithin mathematics.
The apparentlyconflicting strandsof approvaland disapprovalof "contextual
definitions"found in Frege's thought trace to this: Any clear-cut propertycan
serve as the grounds for extracting a definite concept-object. As such, the
concept-objectcan be expected to possess the full range of propertiesnaturalto
abstractobjects-it must representa "self subsistentobject, subject to the usual
laws of identity"and the other featuresthat Frege so often emphasized.On the
other hand, these abstractobjects do not stand to regularpoints and lines in the
spatial relations needed in projective geometry. As long as we adhere to the
originalmeaningof "lies upon",concept-objectslike "thedirectionof L" or "the
involution 0" will lie upon no lines whatsoever-abstract objects do not possess
spatiallocations. Yet we saw that phraseslike "p lies upon L" can be redefined
so that all the claims of complexified projectivegeometry are validatedfor con-
cept-objects. But these furtherdefinitions must be done piecemeal-it is this
piecemeal quality that replaces what used to be regarded as "contextual
definition".
(ix)
These observationsare not sufficient to carryus completely to Frege's logicism.
Although the bare creation of numericalconcept-objectsis sanctionedby pure
logic, this does not entail that their non-trivial behavior-e.g., how the
"addition" relation acts-is determined by logic alone. Such facts will be
determinedby the behaviorof the basic objects that make up the extensions of
the relevant concept-objects.In von Staudt's setting, the non-trivialbehaviorof
the points at infinity-e.g., which lines they lie upon-is determinedby the
behavior of the objects-the parallel lines-lying in the extensions associated
with the points. But notice this: the behavior of the points at infinity is
completely dictatedby the behaviorof a much smallersubset of objects thanare
found in the complete extensions. Suppose we want to know whether three
points at infinity a, b, and c lie upon a common line. Ratherthan worryingabout
all of the parallellines definitionallyassociated with a, select the single line La
passing throughthe origin as representative.We can likewise concentrateupon
the representativesLb and Lc. a, b, and c can now be determinedto be collinear
or not by examining the relationshipsamong La, Lb and Lc. In short, our points
at infinity will behave properly if the selected "representatives"do; we can
ignore what happenswith the rest.
Consider any of the standardsystems of numbers, say the naturalnumbers.
Any system of relations that spawns these numbers as concept-objectscan be
considered as a representative of the collection of numbers. Frege had the
brilliantidea thatone might be able to construct"representatives" for each of the
classical numbersystems within the ontology of pure logic alone. For the natural
numbers,his "representativestructure"is well-known;his approachto the reals
(and, presumably,the unpublishedtreatmentof the complex numbers)follows a
similar pattern. By the observationsjust made, the behavior of these logical
Against the particularsense we have proposedto assign to "i", many objections can
of course be brought.By it, we are importinginto arithmeticsomethingquite foreign
to it, namely time. The second stands in absolutely no intrinsic relation to the real
numbers. Propositions proved by the aid of real numbers would become . . .
syntheticjudgments,unless we could find some other proof for them or some other
sense for i. We must at least first make the attemptto show that all propositionsof
arithmeticare analytic.(Frege 1884, p. 112)
(x)
of a concept"is assumed
In [my]definitions thesenseof theexpression"extension
to be known.Thiswayof gettingoverthedifficultycannotbe expectedto meetwith
universalapproval,andmanywill preferothermethodsof removingthe doubtin
question.I attachno decisive importanceeven to bringingin the extensionsof
conceptsat all. (Frege1884,p. 117).
Insofaras I can determine,Frege was willing to concede that logic might afford
other ways of extracting concept-objects from concepts that result in objects
more "intensional"than extensions. Unfortunately,the usual vagaries in the
notion of "intension"make their propercriteriaof identity less than clear. Frege
apparentlyselected sets as the concept-objects utilized in his von Staudt-like
constructions because the conditions of set existence (i.e., Axiom V in the
Grundgesetze)seemed relativelyuncontroversial,even if, from a logical point of
view, extensions constitute objects of secondary importance.His views about
this topic may have changed as his views about the extensionality of
mathematicallanguage22developedon routeto "OnSense and Reference".
In the recent philosophical literature(e.g., Stein 1987), Frege is sometimes
chastised as an example of a mathematicianwho, driven by "bad"philosophical
motives, became committed to an impossible search for the "true essence" of
number, whereas the "good" Dedekind recognized that mathematiciansshould
be concernedonly with the "structures"of numbersystems. There are a variety
of ways in which this appraisalmisrepresentsthe positions of the two writers,
but, at a minimum, it should be recognized that Dedekind, in his demand for
"representationfree" accounts of mathematicalobjects, was somewhat more
"absolutist"about mathematicalconstructionsthan the historicalFrege seems to
have been. I imagine that Frege would have found that, at first blush,
"representationfree" constructions count as aesthetically more pleasing than
their competitors, but that this virtue might pale if the resulting constructions
become overly complicated (as would happen if the "representationfree"
demand forces geometers to include both line and circle involutions within the
definitionof imaginarypoint).
While on this topic, we might examine an objectionto Frege's procedurethat
George Boolos makes in an importantarticleon Frege's approachto numbers:
The well-known distinction that Frege draws. . . between "the direction of line L"
and "the numberbelonging to concept F" is thereforeseriously misleading. We do
not suspect that lines are made of directions, that directions are some of the
ingredientsof lines.. . The principlethatdirectionsof lines are identicaljust in case
the lines are parallel looks, and is, trivial only because we suppose that directions
are... distinct from the things of which lines are made. (Boolos 1990).
In point of fact, in the von Staudt universe some lines-e.g., the lines at
infinity-are "madeof directions".Even worse, it is assumed that concepts can
apply to the very concept-objects manufacturedfrom them. For example, the
original motivation for constructing relation-objects to correspond to the
involutaryrelation"xx' = -10" was to supply two "points"that become mapped
into themselves by the original relation. In the nineteenthcentury, concepts (or
functions) were not regardedas intrinsicallytied to the objects in the domain in
which they are first encountered;otherwiseit makes no sense to maintainthat an
elliptic function's "truehome" is on a Riemannsurface.In this sense, one might
wish to resist the wholely extensionalpoint of view that makes the domain of a
functionconstitutiveof its very identity.
On the other hand, this point of view seems prima facie at odds with the
recognition that the meanings of "line" and "lies upon" must genuinely alter
when the shift to the extendeddomain is made. As is well known, Frege thought
the practiceof using a common symbol "-"to designatethe two "multiplication"
operationsover the reals and the complex numberswas a mistake, encouraging
mathematiciansto believe that they had proved facts for the complex realm
which had really been proved only for the reals. However, as long as the
meaning of the "persistingform" "xx' = -10" is treatedin sufficiently abstract
fashion, the two viewpoints can be reconciled. Frege's strictureson definability
do not entail that one cannot meaningfullyinquire whetherthe triple of objects
<number,number,operation>satisfy the form "xgx' = -10" in both the real and
complex domains.23Although the specific "multiplication"operationsdiffer in
the two domains, we can still study how a particular"form"behaves when we
move from the reals to the complex numbers.Indeed, it would be disastrousfor
Frege's philosophy of mathematicsif it could not constructsome sense in which
the behavior of elliptic functions (or involutions) could be compared over
different domains. After all, much of the genius of nineteenth century
(xi)
In summation:I have claimed that Frege's more radical philosophical claims,
especially those expressed in the Grundlagen, come into sharperfocus when
viewed from the perspective of the prior discussions of the extension element
problem within geometry. There are two primary reasons for the increased
vividness of the geometricalsetting:(1) Von Staudt'stechniquesin geometryrun
roughshodover the expected "sensuouscontent"of geometricalpropositions,to
the extent of harnessing erstwhile concepts to the work of concrete objects.
Frege's philosophical pronouncementson definition and context justify these
procedures,but their applicationswithin Frege's own context seem very tame,
largely because we lack a robust sense of the apparent"content"of arithmetical
propositions.(2) Nineteenthcenturygeometryrepresenteda disciplinein internal
tension, a tension arising from the need to admit new elements while retaininga
permanence in subject matter (we want to let geometry enlarge her living
quartersa bit without allowing her to bolt the stable altogether). Von Staudt
found an unusual approach to definitions that (temporarily) resolved these
conflicting demands upon geometry neatly. Frege's own views on definitional
practicewalk the same delicate line as von Staudt's,but, since Frege's numerical
context is a static one, we scarcely appreciatethe methodologicalpitfalls that he
felt constrainedto avoid in his philosophyof mathematics.
The "royal road" of this paper's title is intended somewhat whimsically.
Although virtually every road in nineteenth century mathematicsran directly
through geometry, they also-courtesy of Riemann's grand synthesis-wound
through virtually every other area of mathematics as well. Although I have
concentratedupon geometry here, it should be recognized that closely related
problems of "extension elements" developed elsewhere (e.g., Kummer's "ideal
numbers" mentioned above). Frege was clearly aware of these other
developments and of the deep ties that bound them. Given Frege's rather
unpleasanttendency to not acknowledge positive influences, any reconstruction
of his thoughtprocesses must per force be speculative.For the reasons cited in
the previous paragraph,the geometricalcase remainsthe most salient setting for
understandingthe various philosophical attitudes towards mathematicalexis-
tence that were popularin Frege's era. Accordingly,I have treatedit in isolation
here, althoughFrege would have viewed mattersfrom a richerperspective.
Recognition of such geometricalprecedents,of course, should not be seen as
minimizing the magnitudeof Frege's personalachievements.It is worth stating,
however, that certain modern commentators regularly undervalue the
comment upon the burning issues within analysis in his time-e.g., the
possibilities for evading the use of Dirchlet's principle within Riemann's work.
Of course, Frege was quite rigorousin his own projects,but this rigor does not
appearharnessedto higher mathematicalends in the mannerof Weierstrassand
other contemporaneousworkerson foundations.On the other hand, the puzzles
of reconstitution of domain, so acutely raised within nineteenth century
geometry,do not hinge upon worriesabout"rigor"per se, but upon questionsof
how unexpectedmodificationsof old definitions and theoremscan be permitted
in mathematics,while retainingsome sense thatthe discipline's subjectmatteris
permanent and immutable. Even though the mathematical task of defining
"naturalnumber"is not, on the face of it, an "extension element" problem, I
submit that if we see Frege's work as conceived in the shadow of the
methodological concerns arising in geometry, we will better understandthe
characterof his philosophyand the mannerin which he conceived his logicism.
Returning once again to the "reconceptualization"issues with which we
began, I believe that, even today, we scarcely understandthe character of
mathematicalconcepts-how it is thatthey can "growand thrive"over time. Too
much concern with set theoretic formalization-whose purpose, after all, is
simply to granta concept a temporaryfoothold on rigor-may have dimmedour
eyes to this fact. Perhapsthe realizationthat one of the founding parentsof set
theoretic rigor was deeply concerned with such issues may serve, as a bit of
carbonateof ammonium, to reawaken us to the deep problems of conceptual
growth within mathematics,even if Frege's particularanswers can no longer be
regardedas wholly satisfactory.
Notes
1I would like to thank Tom Ricketts, John Bell, Burton Dreben and, especially, Bill
Demopoulos and Ken Mandersfor helpful comments. Bob Battermandrew the figures.
2 Several good accounts of the projective revolution are: (Coolidge 1940), (Merz 1965), (Nagel
1971). Interestingevaluationsby Frege's contemporariescan be found in (Klein 1925) and (Cayley
1989a).
By "projective geometry", I mean "geometry of the school founded by Poncelet", a sense in
which the metrical attributesof the expanded geometrical realm are not excluded. A possibly less
misleading term would be the old-fashioned "geometryfrom a higher point of view", a phrase that
properly suggests that Euclidean geometry is not being overthrown or diminished, but simply
reorganized.
3 The two processes, complexification and projective completion, must be performed con-
currently.To avoid undue technicalities, I shall sometimes illustrateprocedures within the affine
partof a projectiveplane.
4 Benacerrafintends this remarkas a gloss on David Hilbert's views, who was unlikely to view
the extension elements of geometry in the mannerdescribed.
5 Historically,"formalist"responses like Rosenbaum'sbecame prevalentamong geometers after
the publication of David Hilbert's Foundations of Geometry. One wonders whether some of the
crankyanimus that Frege displays towardsHilbertin their interchangesmay trace to a sense that the
philosophical concerns common to Poncelet and von Staudt are likely to be plowed under in
Hilbert'sapproach.Insofaras I am aware,however, this issue is not explicitly raisedby either writer.
For an interestinglaterevaluationby a greatgeometerof the Italianschool, cf. (Enriques1929).
6 Chiefly among the English:Peacock, Boole, etc.
7 (Scott 1900b) is one of the best surveys of von Staudt's thought and, unlike the notoriously
turgidoriginal, attemptsto articulatethe philosophy behindthe method.
might have run in this period (for valuable speculations, see (Freundenthal1981)). Not all uses of
equivalence classes, by the way, seem as philosophically radical as the von Staudtapplications;for
example, if one regardsthe Gaussiancongruence classes as carving new "modulararithmetics"out
the regularintegers. In this kind of case, there is no pressing need to tell a philosophical story a la
von Staudtthat the new domains constructed"have the same reality"as the basic set of objects over
which the construction proceeds. Dedekind clearly conceived all appeals to equivalence classes,
even in von Staudt-likecontexts, in the benign light of the Gaussianparadigm(which, historically,
he was among the first to advance). In essence, the thesis of this paper is that many of the
philosophical concerns in the Grundlagenhave been misunderstoodbecause we now tend to view
all uses of equivalence classes from an uncriticalpoint of view ratherlike Dedekind's.
22 To be precise, Frege might have doubted whether"function"could be properlytreatedin the
set-like way familiar from modern courses on "functionsof a real variable".In the early 1880's it
was more common to presumethat functions, while extensional in their identity conditions, enjoy a
richer, non-set-like charactersuch as they are supplied in the context of "functions of a complex
variable".By the time of the Grundgesetze,"functions of a real variable"was well on its way to
being widely accepted, so Frege may have relaxed his qualms about sets (of course, many logicians
in Frege's time would continued to object to the prevailing "extensionality" among
mathematicians).For a good history of the analysis side of these issues, see (Bottazzini 1980). For a
contemporaneous expression of attitude, cf. (Cayley 1889b). William Demopoulos is currently
investigatingthese difficult matters.
23 Strictly speaking, the "10" and the "-" also shift referentsin the move to the complex realm,
so they should be reassignedto the "tuple"side of this question.
24 Indeed, the sometimes obnoxious restrictionson constructionthat Boolos' stricturesrequire
still representa bone of contentionamong category theorists.
25 Cf. (Schubert 1899). For an interesting perspective on Schubert, see (Kleinman 1976). It is
worth mentioning that various philosophers attemptedto extend the "principleof continuity"into
generalphilosophy of language,e.g. (Cassirer1953).
26 Kenneth Manders, in unpublished work, has given a very deep analysis of the factors that
push the early developments.For geometry's latercareer,see (Dieudonne 1985).
Bibliography
Benacerraf,Paul
1989a "MathematicalTruth"in Benacerrafand Putnam(eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of
Mathematics,Prentice-Hall,Englewood Cliffs.
1989b "Whatthe NumbersCould Not Be" in Benacerrafand Putnam,op cit.
Boolos, George
1990 "The Standardof Equalityof Numbers",preprint.
Bottazzini, Umberto
1980 TheHigher Calculus, W.V. Egmond (trans.),Springer-Verlag,New York.
Cassirer,Ernst
1953 Substanceand Function, translatedby W.C. and M.C. Swabey, Dover, New York.
Cayley, Arthur
1889a "PresidentialAddress to the British Association, September1883", in his Collected Papers,
XIII CambridgeUniversityPress, Cambridge.
1889b "Function"in his Collected Papers, op. cit.
Chern,S.S.
1980 "FromTrianglesto Manifolds",AmericanMathematicalMonthly.
Coolidge, J.L.
1924 The Geometryof the ComplexDomain, ClarendonPress, Oxford.
1940 A History of GeometricalMethods,ClarendonPress, Oxford.
Davis, Phillip
1987 "WhenMathematicsSays No" in No Way-the Nature of the Impossible,Phillip J. Davis
and David Park(eds.), W.H. Freeman,New York.
Dieudonne,Jean
1985 History of Algebraic Geometry,JudithSally (trans.),Wadsworth,Monterey.
Edwards,H.M.
1980 "TheGenesis of Ideal Theory",Archivefor the History of the Exact Sciences, 23.
1987 "Dedekind'sInventionof Ideals"in Studies in the History of Mathematics,ed. by Esther
Phillips, MathematicalAssociation of America.
Enriques,Fredrigo
1929 The Historical Developmentof Logic, MacMillan,New York.
Frege, Gottlob
1873 "On a GeometricalRepresentationof ImaginaryForms in the Plane"in (Frege 1984).
1874 "Methodsof Calculationbased on an Extension of the Conceptof Quality"in (Frege 1984).
1879 Begriffsshrift,Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg(trans.),in From Frege to Godel, Jeanvan
Heijenoort(ed.), HarvardUniversityPress, Cambridge1967.
1878 "Lectureon a Way of Conceiving the Shape of a Triangleas a Complex Quantity",in (Frege
1984).
1884 Die Grundlagender Arithmetik,Translatedby J.L. Austin as The Foundationsof Arithmetic,
Harper& Brothers,New York 1960.
1884a "Lectureon the Geometryof Pairs of Points in the Plane"in (Frege 1984).
1885 "On the Law of Inertia"in (Frege 1984).
1984 Collected Papers on Mathematics,Logic and Philosophy, Brian McGuiness (ed), Basil
Blackwell, Oxford.
Freudenthal,Hans
1981 "The Impactof von Staudt'sFoundationsof Geometry"in P. Plaumannand K. Strambach
(ed), Geometry-von Staudt'sPoint of View, D. Reidel, Dordrecht.
Hardy,G.H.
1949 Divergent Series, ClarendonPress, Oxford.
Klein, Felix
1925 The Developmentof Mathematicsin the NineteenthCentury,translatedby M. Ackerman,
Math Sci Press, Brookline (no date; originallypublishedin 1925).
Kleinman,Steven
1976 "RigorousFormulationof Schubert'sEnumerativeCalculus"in F. Browder(ed.),
MathematicalDevelopmentsArisingfrom Hilbert Problems, AmericanMathematical
Society, Providence.
Manders,Kenneth
1987 "Logic and ConceptualRelationshipsin Mathematics"in Logic Colloquium'85, Elsevier
(Holland:1987).
1989 "DomainExtension and the Philosophy of Mathematics",Journalof Philosophy, Vol.
XXXVI, 10.
Merz, John Theodore
1965 A History of EuropeanScientific Thoughtin the NineteenthCentury,Vol. II, Dover,
New York.
Nagel, Ernest
1971 "TheFormationof ModernConceptionsof FormalLogic in the Developmentof Geometry"
in Teleology Revisited, ColumbiaUniversityPress, New York.
Peirce, Charles
1976 TheNew Elementsof Mathematics,Vol. III/1, Mouton,The Hague.
Poncelet, Jean-Victor
1987 Traitedes Proprietes Projectives des Figures, J.J. Gray, trans.,in The History of
Mathematics-AReader,John Fauvel and J.J. Gray (eds.), MacMillanPress, Houndsmill
Reye, Theodore
1898 Lectureson the Geometryof Position, translatedby T.F. Holgate, MacMillan,New York.
Rosenbaum,Robert
1963 Introductionto Projective Geometryand ModernAlgebra, Addison-Wesley, Reading.
Russell, Bertrand
1964 The Principles of Mathematics,Norton,New York.
Russell, J. W.
1893 An ElementaryTreatiseon Pure Geometry,ClarendonPress, Oxford.
Schubert,Hermann
1899 MathematicalEssays, Open Court,Chicago.
Scott, CharlotteAngas
1900a "The Statusof Imaginariesin Pure Geometry",Bul. Amer.Math. Soc. VI.
1900b "Onvon Staudt'sGeometrieder Lage",Math. Gazette.
Simons, Peter
1987 "Frege's Theory of Real Numbers",History and Philosophy of Logic 8.
Sluga, Hans
1980 GottlobFrege, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Stein, Howard
1988 "Logos, Logic and Logistike"in MinnesotaStudies in the Philosophy of Science XI, ed. by
W. Aspray and P. Kitcher,MinnesotaUniversityPress, Minneapolis.
von Staudt,G.K.C.
1847 Die Geometrieder Lage, Erlangen.
1856 Beitrage zur Geometrieder Lage, Nuremberg.
Weyl, Hermann
1955 The Conceptof a RiemannSurface,Addison-Wesley,Reading.