Philosophical aspects of the work of Poincaré

Abstract

The epistemological investigations of Poincare gave rise to French epistemology. Poincare's epistemology is also one of the main references for logical empiricism, and the relationship between Poincare and Enriques allows us to study the matrices of modern epistemology. Even the new concept of space-time proposed by Picasso is closely connected to Poincare’s epistemology. The epistemological and philosophical problems investigated by Poincare mainly concern deterministic chaos, the concept of space in geometry, the foundations of mathematics and physics and the definition of a general philosophy of science, and also touches on aspects related to morality and materialism. One might say that the philosophy of Poincare is taken to the limit of modernity, to the threshold of twentieth-century epistemology. Poincare was a careful interpreter of his time, always open to everything new in all sectors of the physics and mathematics, and able to discuss frankly the languages and theories of his fellow philosophers.