Background
Cavaillès, Jean was born in 1903 in Saint Maixent.
Cavaillès, Jean was born in 1903 in Saint Maixent.
Held various posts in Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and at the Sorbonne. During the Second World War, a leading member of the French Resistance. Captured by the Germans in 1943, and executed the following year.
One of Cavaillès’s great contributions to the history of mathematics and logic was to publish the nineteenth-century correspondence between Cantor and Dedekind on set theory. The publicaron of these documents illustrates Cavaillès’s V|ew that contemporary problems can only be understood through a study of their origin and Solution, and those of the disciplines to which they belong. No system of mathematics, logic or science consists of a core of discovered truths within a fixed theoretical framework. The bounduries of each discipline are always only provisional and have, historically, had to be redrawn on more than one occasion. Cavaillès also maintains that the evolution of mathematics, logic and science has not been even. Mathematical discoveries are made in response to Pragmatic pressures, or the background of a need 10 provide solutions to particular problems. Mathematics is an open discipline, in the sense that it responds to demands placed upon it by other subject areas, notably by the requirements °f science. The insistence of Cavaillès on the historical dimension of what is and can be known has had enormous influence on subsequent philosophers of mathematics and science, including Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem.