Alexandre Koyré im “Mekka der Mathematik”

Abstract

In 1909 A. Koyre (1892–1964) came to Gottingen as an exile and there became a student of Edmund Husserl and other philosophers (A. Reinach, M. Scheler): already before leaving his country Russia Koyre read Husserl'sLogical Investigations, a text which interested greatly Russian philosophers and was translated into Russian in the same year. As many other contemporary philosophers, in Gottingen they were discussing on the fundaments of mathematic, Cantor's set theory and Russell's antinomies. On this problems Koyre wrote a long paper inspired to Husserl'sLogical Investigations, read it in the Philosophical Society at Gottingen and submitted it as draft for his Ph.D. dissertation to Prof. Husserl, who refused it. So unhappily the celebrated methodologist and historian of science began his academical career: Koyre came back to write on logical and mathematical paradoxes in 1922 and in 1946–47 saying he was “going back to his first love”. Among other factors this deep interest in mathematic and exact sciences unabled Koyre to analyze Galileo and Newton in his masterly way.