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September or December 2021, Workshop "Intuition & rigour in geometrical thinking from antiquity to the 19th century", Prague, Czech Republic

Date: September or December 2021
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Deadline: Friday 20 March 2020

*CFP. Workshop: Intuition and rigour in geometrical thinking from Antiquity to the 19th century. *

*PRAGUE, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences; 22-23 June 2020.*

Organizers: Davide Crippa (Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences); Ladislav Kvasz (Center for formal Epistemology, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences).

From the end of the 19th century, mathematical and philosophical literature has often portrayed a contrast between visual intuition and logical rigor. In a famous lecture from 1933 on the crisis of intuition, H. Hahn saw the demise of intuitive reasoning and the embrace of careful logical inference as an historical fact brought about by the process of rigorization of analysis. In the field of geometry, Hans Freudenthal also remarked how the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries in the 19th century cut the "tie with reality and intuition". However, the terms "rigour" and "intuition" have rich associations and connotations in different historical contexts, and well before the turn of the 20th century.

The goal of our workshop is to study the historical evolution of these notions within the mathematical pratice, and the epistemological debates that they have raised.

Confirmed keynote speakers are: Helena Durnova (Masaryk University, Brno) Michael Friedman (Humboldt University, Berlin) Eduardo Giovannini (University of Wien) Marco Panza (CNRS, Universit́e Paris 1/Chapman University) Vincenzo de Risi (CNRS, Universit́e Paris 7)

In the workshop there are a few (cca 5) slots for contributed papers (30 min. presentation). We invite abstracts in accordance to the theme of the conference. In particular, we encourage proposals that discuss, from a historical and philosophical perspective, the following questions:

- when did intuition started to be seen as a matter of concern and/or distrust? - When did mathematicians started to talk about rigour and considered it as a virtue of mathematical arguments? - intuition and diagrammatic reasoning in geometry, in different cultural and historical contexts. - the crisis of intuition and the emergence of formalism.

Submissions of abstracts should not exceed 250 words, and must be written in English (conference language). Please send your submission and inquiries to

Deadline for submissions: 20.03.2020

*The workshop is organized by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, with the help of the Centre of Formal Epistemology and the GACR project 19-03125Y.*

Due to the current COVID-19 crisis, the workshop has been postponed to December 2020.

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