Foundations of Geometry and Induction

Abstract

THOSE who knew the late Jean Nicod will be glad to have this translation of his two main works; yet the book itself will interest a much larger circle of readers, because of the very problems it discusses and because of the original and valuable contributions made by the author towards their solution. In discussing “Geometry in the Sensible World”, Nicod starts from data of perception and tries to derive the various geometries that can be built on them, a method which is quite the inverse of Prof. Whitehead's ‘extensive abstraction’. For the logical development of this very interesting method, the author shows us an animal which is endowed successively with more and more complex senses, and tries to build up gradually the geometrical world of his sensations. He obtains in this way some remarkable conclusions which strengthen the case against Kantian philosophy, and illustrate to the full the relations between symbolic logic and experience. Indeed, the line of approach suggested by Nicod is one which ought to become classical in the investigation of the problems concerning mathematics and the external world.

Foundations of Geometry and Induction.

By Jean Nicod. Containing Geometry in the Sensible World, and The Logical Problem of Induction. Translated by Philip Paul Wiener. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. iv + 286. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929.) 16s. net.