Paola Cantu
Research project
Italian epistemology at the end of the 19th century: a fertile contamination?
Project summary
The project aims to compare research on the foundations of mathematics – at the crossroads between the humanities and the hard sciences – in 19th-century Italy, analyzing differences and similarities with contemporary research in France and Germany, in order to show how a case of cultural contamination was transformed into an innovative force and in turn exerted a lasting influence on the development of the relationship between philosophy and mathematics in France, Germany and England. The research will also aim to verify the extent to which the separation of scientific and humanistic knowledge that subsequently became dominant in Italy prevented the further development of these new ideas and methods.
