Jean-Michel Kantor "Mathematics and the World"

On December 22nd professor Jean-Michel Kantor (Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu - Paris Rive Gauche (IMJ-PRG)) gave a talk "Mathematics and the World" at the joint meeting of Logico-philosophical club and "The aesthetics of the transcendental" seminar (HSE)

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Jean-Michel KANTOR, Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu - Paris Rive Gauche (IMJ-PRG).

One essential philosophical problem of mathematics is its applicability (noticed among others by Eugene Wigner in "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences"). First Professor Kantor considered some historical examples from mixed - later called applied - mathematics. In particular he focused on the great mathematicians who worked in the recent period with pure as well as with applied mathematics, in hydrodynamics (Jean Leray, Kolmogorov). Then he discussed the connection of mathematics with physics (following for example Vladimir Arnold, Yakob Sinai). Finally he concluded with recent trends connected with the applicability of mathematics, following Gromov’s philosophical point of view, and a hommage to Vladimir Voevodsky and his  unifying research  program.