I research the development of set theory - which serves as the foundation of modern mathematics - with a particular focus on the ‘foundational crisis of mathematics’ from 1921-28. Paying particular attention to the politicisation of the set-theoretic debate in the 1920s, I focus on the use of political rhetoric in Weimar mathematical writing, particularly the language of ‘Putschism’ and the identification, and self-identification, of anti set-theoretic mathematicians with this label. Exploring the relationship between the mathematical critique of set theory as unable to deliver stable knowledge on the one hand, and the charge that it was divorced from intuition and organic modes of thought on the other, I explore how this tied into a critique of ‘Jewish Mathematics’ and the racialisation of mathematics in the 1930s. Drawing the debate on ‘Jewish’ versus ‘Aryan’ mathematics back a decade, I hope to situate the mathematical critique of set theory in the culture of late and post-imperial Germany, and in so doing provide an explanation for the crystallisation of the debate on political grounds.
Publications:
Glasman, T. The iterative conception of set does not justify ZFC. Synthese 203, 36 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04408-8