Peano’s Geometry: From Empirical Foundations to Abstract Development

Bertran San-Millán, Joan

http://hdl.handle.net/10451/61755

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Bertran San-Millán, Joan

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In Principii di Geometria (1889b) and ‘Sui fondamenti della Geometria’ (1894) Peano offers axiomatic presentations of projective geometry. There seems to be a tension in Peano's construction of geometry in these two works: on the one hand, Peano insists that the basic components of geometry must be founded on intuition, and, on the other, he advocates the axiomatic method and an abstract understanding of the axioms. By studying Peano’s empiricist remarks and his conception of the notion of mathematical proof, and by discussing his critique of Segre’s foundation of hyperspace geometry, I will argue that the tension can be dissolved if these two seemingly contradictory positions are understood as compatible stages of a single process of construction rather than conflicting options.