The Idea of Number from Gauss to Cantor.

The Leibnizian Heritage and its Surpassing

Philippe Sguin

1. Introduction: number as an idea

In a letter to David Hilbert, datelined January 27, 1900, Georg Cantor takes a position
against Dedekinds opinion that numbers are free creations of the human mind (free
underlined by Cantor), and the editors comment as follows:
In der berzeugung, da Zahlen auch transiente Realitt besitzen [. . . ], be-
steht denn auch die wesentliche Dierenz zu Dedekind, dem die Zahlen freie
Schpfungen des menschlichen Geistes sind. Es ist der Gegensatz zwischen
dem Finden oder Entdecken einerseits und dem Ernden oder Schpfen
andererseits, der in den Auassungen dieser beiden Mathematiker zum Aus-
druck kommt. [Cantor 1991, 428429]
They refer, as expected, to a very often quoted passage from the Grundlagen einer
allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre (1883), in which Cantor states that the essence of
mathematics just consists of its freedom (das Wesen der Mathematik liegt gerade in
ihrer Freiheit) [Cantor 1932, 182]. I was very surprised, because I thought to have read
in Cantor that he had created a new kind of numbers, which he called transnite. A look at
8 of the Grundlagen conrmed indeed that Cantor underscores in a rather exalted style
the mathematicians freedom in introducing (einfhren) new numbers, since he is only
bound by the non-contradiction of his concepts and by the correctness of his denitions
[Cantor 1932, 182], but he doesnt mention at all a power of creation. Nevertheless,
precisely in the strictly mathematical part, when he shows in 11 and 12 how you are
led to denitions of new numbers, Cantor makes use of the following expressions: for
the rst principle of production (+1), formation (Bildung), for the second principle
(omega as a limit), the newly created number (die neu geschaene Zahl) [Cantor
1932, 195]. Finally, after some neutral terms like Einfhrung and Bildung [Cantor
1932, 196], he comes at the end of 12 to recapitulate his reasoning by stating clearly
that he proceeds to the creation of a new integer (die Schpfung einer neuen ganzen
Zahl) [Cantor 1932, 199].

R. Krmer and Y. Chin-Drian (eds.), New Essays on Leibniz Reception, Publications des Archives 1
Henri Poincar Publications of the Henri Poincar Archives, DOI 10.1007/978-3-0346-0504-5_1,
Springer Basel AG 2012
2 P. Sguin

In this paper I would like to show that the creationist conception of the number
notion proceeds from a tradition of German mathematical thinking, which considers the
number as something higher than a concept, which I shall designate as an idea. This
conception is in my view related indirectly but by multiple links to Leibniz philosophical
thinking as well as to its surpassing, notably by the German new humanism which came
to light in the middle of the 18th century, and by what we used to call German idealism.
To this end I shall consider and analyse statements of mathematicians and fundamental
texts, particularly by authors like Gauss, Jacobi, Kummer and Dedekind, whose names
and works are quoted by Cantor.

2. Gauss (17771855), number theory and science for itself

Let us begin with two Gauss quotations, the one about life in general, the other about
mathematics. In 1802, Gauss is just 25 years old, he writes to his former fellow student
Wolfgang Bolyai:
Mge der Traum den wir das Leben nennen, dir ein ser seyn, ein Vorge-
schmack des wahren Lebens in unsrer eigentlichen Heymath, wo den erwach-
ten Geist nicht mehr die Ketten des trgen Leibes, die Schranken des Raums,
die Geissel der irdischen Leiden und das Necken unserer kleinlichen Bedrf-
nisse und Wnsche drckt. [Gauss 1899, 47]
It is noteworthy that Gauss does not refer to the salvation of the soul, but to a prob-
lem of knowledge, since he mentions the deliverance of the mind, not of the soul, from
the limits of space, not of the world. Of course we know that God did not create space
(Raum), he created the world (Gott schuf die Welt). But for Gauss, space is more in-
teresting, because it not only represents the world of divine creation, but it is the product
of mans need for knowledge as well, therefore a product of the human mind, at least up
to a certain point. Indeed, here it is what he wrote to Bessel on the 21st of January 1829
(this passage follows the well-known quotation about das Geschrei der Botier):
Nach meiner innigsten berzeugung hat die Raumlehre in unserem Wissen a
priori eine ganz andere Stellung, wie die reine Grssenlehre; es geht unserer
Kenntnis von jener durchaus diejenige vollstndige berzeugung von ihrer
Nothwendigkeit (also auch von ihrer absoluten Wahrheit) ab, die der letzteren
eigen ist; wir mssen in Demuth zugeben, dass, wenn die Zahl bloss unseres
Geistes Product ist, der Raum auch ausser unserem Geiste eine Realitt hat,
der wir a priori unsere Gesetze nicht vollstndig vorschreiben knnen. [Gauss
1899, 497]
Space is higher than number, which is only our minds product, precisely because
its reality is outside our mind. This declaration would not be surprising if it were not from
Gauss. In fact, one year before writing the rst letter, 1801, Gauss had published the Dis-
quisitiones arithmeticae, with which number theory started again on a totally new basis,
and Gauss himself became famous in the whole of mathematical Europe. In addition to
this, we know many statements of Gauss himself: mathematics is the queen of science,
number theory the queen of mathematics. To Lejeune-Dirichlet he condes that number
 The Idea of Number from Gauss to Cantor 3

theory is his favourite domain [Gauss 18631933 vol. 2, 515], and that he greatly prefers
people who cultivate science for itself [Biermann 1975, 165]: from these assertions one
can deduce that Gauss cultivates numbers and their theory for themselves. Therefore,
what exclusively comes from the human mind is superior for Gauss, and it is number.
Of course we can connect this conception with the situation of mathematics in that
time: particularly since the end of the 18th century, many problems have become more
and more urgent: what was called the parallels problem, the foundations of analysis,
the resolution of equations with radicals for instance. But Gausss expression, cultivate
science [not sciences, P. S.] for itself, goes beyond the scope of mathematics, and this
attitude nds a conrmation in a famous quotation of a younger colleague of Gauss, which
we will now analyse and comment, and which responds to a specic cultural background.

3. Carl Gustav Jacobi (18041851) and the numbers honour

3.1. Philology and the unity of science
People interested in history of mathematics know this saying attributed to Jacobi: Why
are we doing mathematics? For the honour of the human mind. It belongs to the set of
quotations which the public enjoys, particularly if this public consists of mathematicians,
and which you can read for instance in Jeremy Grays book about Hilbert [Gray 2000,
168]. But most of the time the quotation is wrong: Jacobi did not write mathematics,
but science, and he wrote Mr Fourier [. . . ]should have known, and not he should
understand, as a renowned mathematician said one time. The exact quotation is to be
found in a letter to the mathematician Legendre. Therefore it is in French:
M. Fourier avait lopinion que le but principal des mathmatiques tait luti-
lit publique et lexplication des phnomnes naturels ; mais un philosophe
comme lui aurait d savoir que le but unique de la science, cest lhonneur
de lesprit humain, et que sous ce titre, une question de nombres vaut autant
quune question du systme du monde. [Jacobi 18811891 vol. 1, 454]
Jacobi puts world and numbers on the same level. But why should Fourier have
known this? After some research, the answer looks easily given: Jacobi was in possession
of the Histoire des Mathmatiques depuis leur origine jusqu lanne 1808 by Charles
Bossut, a friend and collaborator of dAlembert, who also wrote a successful handbook
about calculus and was a colleague of Fourier at the Ecole polytechnique. And in his book
about history of mathematics, Bossut asserts that calculus is part of the great achievements
which contribute to the honour of the human mind [Bossut 1810 vol. 2, 3]. How could
Fourier not have known this? As a matter of fact, it is not important whether Fourier
knew this or not, because what Jacobi considers as evidence does not come from French
thinking, it is grounded in a German tradition which was very strong in his time, the great
German science in the second half of the 18th and during most of the 19th century, and
which has now disappeared: it is between this science and mathematics that Gauss and
Jacobi have been hesitating.
In Grays book quoted above we can read that the rst mathematics seminar at the
university of Knigsberg had been organized after a successful eld in Germany in those
4 P. Sguin

times, linguistics [Gray 2000, 15]. It is only partly true, the notion of linguistics hides
a much bigger reality. The science which had awakened Germany intellectually about
1750 was called philology. It had allowed Germany and its rising middle class, which
was lacking any political power until the end of the 19th century, to revive the ideals of
Greece and Rome. It had lled Gauss and Jacobi in such a manner that they had been
hesitating about the choice of their profession. In the case of Gauss this hesitation was
understandable: the very young university of Gttingen, which had been founded in 1734,
had become rapidly a centre of attraction in the whole of Europe thanks to the work and
the personality of such scholars as Christian Gottlieb Heyne, Johann Matthias Gesner
and others, the grounding fathers of German philology, whereas Gauss had to attend the
lectures of the professor of mathematics Abraham Kstner, who couldnt compete with
the great mathematicians of his time, such as dAlembert, Euler, Lagrange, etc.
If philology began with the study, editing and translation of old texts, most in Greek
and Latin, it became in the beginning of the 19th century an encyclopaedia of all human
knowledge, the science of the human mind, with August Boeckh (17851867). Jacobi was
a brilliant student in his seminar, and Karl Weierstrass, who was his colleague in Berlin,
called him in 1873, six years after his death, our unforgettable Boeckh [Weierstrass
18941927 vol. 3, 334].
Today, even educated germanists dont know Boeckhs name. In a lecture he has
been giving during more than fty years, Boeckh refers explicitly to Leibniz in order to
dene his subject and to demarcate it from philosophy:
Leibniz, der unter allen Philosophen am meisten Philologe und Gelehrter war,
verbindet mit dem Worte Erudition ungefhr den Sinn, welchen wir der Philo-
logie beilegen; die Erudition hat es nach seiner Ansicht mit dem zu thun, was
wir von den Menschen lernen, quod est facti, die Philosophie mit dem quod
est rationis sive juris. [Boeckh 1877, 25]
In other words, die eigentliche Aufgabe der Philologie [ist] das Erkennen des vom
menschlichen Geist Producirten, d.h. des Erkannten [Boeckh 1877, 10]. But Boeckh
revivies above all Leibnizs ideal which he mentions several times, unity in diversity,
unity of all knowledge of the human mind. That it is, the science, which is the honour
of the human mind. It is the heritage of the great Leibnizian project, which rules out
nothing, where metaphysics and religion have their own place beside art, sciences etc. Ja-
cobi is not frightened at using the word revelation (Oenbarung), which comes from
the vocabulary of religion, when he speaks of science, for example in a letter of the year
1824 [Lejeune-Dirichlet 18891897 vol. 2, 248], but he is above all a mathematician, and
one of the theses he defended at his graduation was: Der Begri der Mathematik ist der
Begri der Wissenschaft berhaupt. Alle Wissenschaften mssen daher streben, Mathe-
matik zu werden. [Jacobi 18811891 vol. 3, 44]. Kurt Biermann quotes this aphorism
[Biermann 1975, 378], but in doing so he forgets an important detail: it is not by Jacobi,
but by Novalis, the romantic poet to whom we owe the blue ower. Jacobi hints ex-
pressly at Novalis (Egregie asserit Novalis pota [Jacobi 18811891 vol. 3, 44]), hence
it doesnt seem to have shocked the jury. Nevertheless, the reference to Novalis could
be surprising, since this fragment means nothing more than a very famous declaration
 The Idea of Number from Gauss to Cantor 5

by Kant in the Metaphysische Anfangsgrnde der Naturwissenschaft ([. . . ] so wird Na-

turlehre nur so viel eigentliche Wissenschaft enthalten, als Mathematik in ihr angewandt
werden kann Vorrede, IX). But in a letter to his brother, Jacobi has recourse to Novalis
in the same way in order to justify the happiness he feels to have chosen mathematics as a
lifetask (Das Leben der Gtter ist Mathematik, sagt Novalis mit Recht, denn mein Leben
jetzt ist das Leben der Gtter [Koenigsberger 1904, 118]). What does this enthusiasm
mean for the romantic poet?

3.2. Novalis and mathematics as a religion

A partial answer is given to us by a poem quoted in Tobias Dantzigs book Number, the
Language of Science [Dantzig 1930, 179], as being by Jacobi, but which is in reality a
parody of a well-known poem by Schiller, who was one of the founders of German idea-
lism with the philosopher Fichte: both had tried, in their own way, to surpass the Kantian
criticism in order to go back to a unique, unied knowledge. Leibnizs mark is to be found
as well in Schiller as in Fichte, even if it is not obvious in the rsts work, and dissimulated
in the seconds. Jacobi takes over Schillers idea that art is divine, but that it had been so
before the world existed, because What in the cosmos thou seest is but the reection
of God, / The God that reigns in Olympus is Number Eternal. [Dantzig 1930, 179].
Then for Jacobi there is undoubtedly a unity between the numbers (mathematics) and the
world, but the numbers have priority, and they are at the same time divine and human as
products of the human mind. Actually, Jacobi is a perfect idealist: of course Kant was
convinced of the minds superiority over matter, but for Schiller, Fichte, Novalis, Hegel
and for Jacobi, the minds superiority and honour have a divine dimension which Kant,
the great separator of science and metaphysics, did not recognize.
It is not certain whether Jacobi knew the origins of Novaliss nowadays strange ideas
about mathematics. People knew of course that Novalis, like Alexander von Humboldt,
had attended the prestigious Bergakademie at Freiberg in Saxony, where the geologist
Abraham Werner was teaching. But the editors of his work had set him up as a romantic
dreamer and deleted the scientic and philosophical aspects of his activity. His readers
could only recognize the inuence of Frans Hemsterhuiss thinking on him, particularly
the relation between mathematics and divinity. Actually, Novalis was really initiated into
the mathematics of his time, calculus, which he learned with Bossuts handbook, and in
1798 already, in the year of the translation into German of Lagranges Thorie des fonc-
tions analytiques, he had the book in his possession. He was impressed in such a way by
the theory of the development in power series that the notion of Potenzenreihe (nowa-
days Potenzreihe) is at the very center of the founding fragment of his romanticism
theory [Novalis 1960 vol. 2, 545]. But in addition to this he was fascinated by the the-
ory of the combinatorial school of Carl Friedrich Hindenburg (17411808), whose goal
was nothing other than to found analysis, and then the whole of mathematics, on one for-
mula, the formula of the multinome. And the fact is that Hindenburg constantly refers to
Leibniz, so that he tries to pass o his theory, combinatorial analysis, for the realization of
Leibnizs ars combinatoria. Here is the rather overbearing result of his research at the end
of his founding treatise, Der polynomische Lehrsatz, das wichtigste Theorem der ganzen
Analysis (1796):
6 P. Sguin

Das mag genug seyn, den Nutzen der Einfhrung einer allgemeinen Charak-
teristik von fest gesetzter unabnderlicher Form und Bedeutung zu bewhren;
[. . . ] Irre ich mich nicht, so habe ich das, was Leibniz von einer wahren und
chten Verbindungskunst fordert [. . . ] nach Mglichkeit erreicht. [Hindenburg
1796, 302]
He did not doubt being capable of giving a universal method in order to solve all
mathematical problems, and what is more, the problems of all sciences. The conclusion
of Der polynomische Lehrsatz is worth being quoted:
Die combinatorische Analysis hat endlich den Schleyer aufgedeckt, und es
bleibt hinfort nicht mehr dem blinden Ungefhr berlassen, ob und wenn es
der Legem naturae herbeyfhren will. Die Spur, auf welcher die Gttin wan-
delt, ist hier berall deutlich vorgezeichnet, und kann man sie nunmehr festen
und sichern Fues verfolgen. [Hindenburg 1796, 304]
The middle-aged Hindenburg writes like the young romantics Novalis and Schlegel
and the idealists Schiller and Fichte. Novalis was so much under the inuence of Hin-
denburgs combinatorial ideal, that he set about compiling an encyclopeadia, although
not along the line of dAlemberts descriptive kind, but after a combinatorial scheme, all
branches of knowledge answering each other. Novaliss goal was that all elds fructify
the others in order to produce new ideas, the combinatorial art being a new ars inveniendi.
Of this attempt to an absolutization of human knowledge which rested particularly
upon mathematics, physics, chemistry etc., we can see a rst draft in a thick collection
of fragments called Brouillon gnral, but it was itself soon surpassed and embedded
in a far more universal project. This project, in which mathematics and religion had
a chief part, was called magic idealism by Novalis, and we have to understand certain
enigmatic fragments, which were called after Novaliss death Hymns to mathematics, in
relation to Novaliss design (Die reine Mathematik ist die Anschauung des Verstandes,
als Universum. [Novalis 1960 vol. 3, 593] Reine Mathematik ist Religion. [ibid.,
594]). Part of these Hymns are the two aphorisms quoted above by Jacobi, and other
fragments were quoted later on by Pringsheim, Minkowski and other mathematicians.
Unlike Novalis, Jacobi does not seem to have been very interested in religion, but it is not
the case of all German mathematicians of his time. Ernst Eduard Kummer for instance,
the successor in Berlin of Jacobi, whom he very much revered, was like him intellectually
with a wide range of interests, but in addition to that he put religion at the top of mans
activities.

4. Kummer (18101893), religion and the ideal of freedom

Kummer is particularly interesting for us because he was not only a rst rate mathemati-
cian who dedicated most of his research to number theory, but he also was like Novalis
a child of Protestantism and idealistic philosophy, and he did not disavow them. It is
very surprising to read in a letter of the year 1842 to Kronecker (Kronecker was nineteen,
Kummer thirtytwo), that he considered Schelling, who at the age of sixtysix had just been
appointed at the university of Berlin, as the greatest philosophical personality still living
 The Idea of Number from Gauss to Cantor 7

[Kummer 1975 vol. 1, 78]. But let us rst observe that Schelling, in his attempt to surpass
Kant, had been looking for philosophical inspiration in Leibniz. Here is what he wrote in
one of his major works, Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797):
Die Zeit ist gekommen, da man seine Philosophie wieder herstellen kann. Sein
Geist verschmhte die Fesseln der Schule, kein Wunder, da er unter uns nur in
wenigen verwandten Geistern fortgelebt hat und unter den brigen lngst ein
Fremdling geworden ist [. . . ]. Er hatte in sich den allgemeinen Geist der Welt,
der in den mannigfaltigsten Formen sich selbst oenbart und wo er hinkommt,
Leben verbreitet. [Schelling 1976 vol. 5, 77]
Can we imagine Kummers letter to Kronecker in the hands of German physicists,
chemists, physiologists of that time, who looked upon Schellings and Hegels from Pre-
romantism proceeding Naturphilosophie as the worst obscurantism? Besides, wasnt
the title of Schellings last great work, Philosophie der Oenbarung, (Oenbarung = rev-
elation) the best conrmation for their opinion? But like Jacobi, Kummer wasnt afraid
of the word revelation, and a proof of it is a passage of a speech made in 1848 about
academic freedom, in which he speaks of the divine as the origin of the human minds
freedom and of the revelations of the divine as the guides of its aspirations [Kummer
1975 vol. 2, 710]. For Kummer, religion, philosophy, sciences, and especially his domain,
mathematics, are a whole, they are revelations of the divine. In that what he writes to
his mother when he is only eighteen, what he declares constantly until the presentation of
Jacobis works in 1881, what he gives as a justication in his introduction of the complex
divisors, it is freedom which guides his mind, freedom with which god inspired him, the
whole of mankind, that is the human mind. The human mind, he writes on the same page,
is the innite divine contents of its freedom, therefore it makes man capable of mak-
ing justice, art, religion and sciences. But referring like Jacobi to a poem by Schiller,
Kummer does not only mean that freedom is the most inward essence of the mind itself
(die Freiheit [ist] das innerste Wesen des Geistes selbst), he adds to this a historical
perspective inherited from Hegel, whom he revered, saying for instance that the nal end
is absolute freedom, therefore the divine itself, because universal history should be
recognized as a work of the divine mind as well as of the human mind [Kummer 1975
vol. 2, 710]. Nevertheless we have to underscore that the expression human mind,
which Kummer often makes use of, does not come from Hegel, who does not use it.
Kummer wrote these lines in 1848, the year of the last uprising of the German
middle class. The idea of a liberation applied to mathematics is also to be found in 1866
in an address to the king, therefore without technicity, where he hints at the idea of the
liberation of the quantity concept of the limits [. . . ] which are not essential to it and
then disturbing. [Kummer 1975 vol. 2, 786] As an example, and in order to remain
understandable, he mentions calculation with letters (algebra), which he qualies as a
rst grand creation. [ibid.] In the same way he points to the creative power of the
mind in his introductory note about Jacobi [Kummer 1975 vol. 2, 696], and later his
biographer, K. Hensel [Kummer 1975 vol. 1, 39], as well as Dedekind [Dedekind 1930
1932 vol. 3, 490], did not hesitate to speak of the creation of ideal numbers by Kummer.
However, it is remarkable that Kummer himself, although he gave a name to his complex
8 P. Sguin

divisors and surely had the feeling of having created new numbers, since he rst called
them ideal complex numbers, then more simply ideal numbers, did not go so far as
to name himself a creator. Here is the quotation:
Es ist mir gelungen, die Theorie derjenigen complexen Zahlen [. . . ] zu vervoll-
stndigen und zu vereinfachen; und zwar durch Einfhrung einer eigenthm-
lichen Art imaginrer Divisoren, welche ich ideale complexe Zahlen nenne;
[Kummer 1932 vol. 1, 203]
Four times on this rst page of Zur Theorie der complexen Zahlen (1847), Kummer
makes use of the term introduction (Einfhrung), even when he connects his new
theory with the theory of Gauss, the princeps mathematicorum, who was still living. Then,
why ideal? Isnt it a reminiscence of Schiller, Hegel and Boeckh, all representatives
of this higher current of thinking, inherited from Leibniz but surpassed by German
idealism, to which he belonged as well, and the goal of which was the liberation of the
mind? Indeed, ideal numbers allow one to extend a well-known property of the integers,
the unique divisibility in prime factors, to other numbers, the complex integers, therefore
allowing the mind an ever bigger endeavour of generalization to free itself of ever more
non-essential impediments. But one could also be reminded of these lines of Leibniz
about imaginary numbers:
Verum enim vero tenacior est varietatis suae pulcherrimae Natura rerum, aeter-
narum varietatum parens, vel potius divina Mens, quam ut omnia sub unum
genus compingi putiatur. Itaque elegans et mirabile eugium reperit in illo
Analyseos miraculo, idealis mundi monstro, pene inter Ens et non-Ens Am-
phibio, quod radicum imaginarium appellamus. [GM 5, 357]
Leibnizs ideal world, this manifestation of the divine mind, is consistent with Kum-
mers religious conception, as the thinking movement, in its historicity, goes through
mathematics with the invention (the creation?) of algebra, then of Newtons and Leib-
nizs calculus etc. in order to celebrate the human minds ascension to an ever greater,
and particularly to an ever higher freedom. We know that Dedekind himself made Kum-
mers ideas his own and laid the foundation to a new theory which he designed as theory
of ideals. But instead we are going to consider his work with real numbers.

5. Dedekind (18311916) en tat de Crateur absolu1

In an often quoted letter of Dedekind to Heinrich Weber of 24th January 1888 we can read
(recalling that Gauss was an inventor, or creator, with Wilhelm Weber, of the telegraph):
Wir sind gttlichen Geschlechtes und besitzen ohne jeden Zweifel schpferi-
sche Kraft nicht blo in materiellen Dingen (Eisenbahnen, Telegraphen), son-
dern ganz besonders in geistigen Dingen. [Dedekind 19301932 vol. 3, 489]

1
[Novalis 1960 vol. 3, 415].
 The Idea of Number from Gauss to Cantor 9

If Dedekind had been content with expressing his opinions about mathematics con-
dentially, it would have been of no consequence, but it was the contrary, and this makes
Dedekind all the more interesting. Unlike Jacobi and Kummer, Dedekind almost never
deals with philosophy, but rather shows no interest in it, and even exhibits a full misun-
derstanding. Once he mentions Fichte in a letter to his sister, just to turn to ridicule the
latters supposed pretension to deduce the world from mans mind alone [Scharlau 1981,
33]. Dedekind loved music, romantic music, not Wagner, and he frequented the house of
Dirichlet, who was a musician too. Neither Dirichlet nor Dedekind seem to have under-
stood Jacobis philosophical interests, but it is precisely Dedekind, who clearly puts man
into Gods place; he makes of him a creator.
To the question what are numbers and what is their meaning? (Was sind und
was sollen die Zahlen? 1888) he answers in a calm and collected manner in the preface:
Numbers are the free creation of the human mind. [Dedekind 19301932 vol. 3, 335].
In doing this, he conrms the motto, [ibid.], a parody
of the Greek aphorism: God always geometrizes. The paradigm of the truth is no
longer geometry, but numbers, which are creations of the human mind. Not only did
Dedekind make this statement, but he put it into practice already in 1872, since he names
the fourth chapter of Continuity and irrational numbers (Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen)
Creation of the irrational numbers [Dedekind 19301932 vol. 3, 323], and in this place
he formulates his famous denition of the cut:
Jedesmal nun, wenn ein Schnitt (A1 , A2 ) vorliegt, welcher durch keine ratio-
nale Zahl hervorgebracht wird, so erschaen wir eine neue, eine irrationale
Zahl a, welche wir als durch diesen Schnitt (A1 , A2 ) vollstndig denirt anse-
hen [Dedekind 19301932 vol. 3, 323].
In doing so and in conformity with what he had declared without pathos in the rst
chapter entitled Properties of the rational numbers [Dedekind 19301932 vol. 3, 317],
he placed himself at the end of an evolution of mans creativity: according to Dedekind,
the human mind creates by counting rst the succession of the positive integers, then, in
going over their own limits, negative integers, then rational numbers, thereupon coming
to the notion of a number eld, which was created by Dedekind himself, and eventually
to the irrational numbers. On this level, Dedekind stands at the end of an evolution in
possession of absolute knowledge, in a position not unlike Hegels. In that time Cantor
does not write about creation. It will be the case much later, as we have seen it, without
Dedekinds spontaneity.

6. Conclusion: Leibniz and no end

We have arrived at the provisory end of our exploration. I hope to have shown that the
idea of creation in mathematics is an indirect heritage, and the surpassing of this heritage,
of the Leibnizian conceptions capacity of the human mind to encompass the whole of
knowledge, this knowledge having been produced, created by the human mind itself. The
notion of number, as well as all creations of the human mind (Boeckh) which lead man
to an ever greater freedom (Hegel), to ever higher harmonies, according to a poem by
10 P. Sguin

Schiller, The artists (Die Knstler), which was in the 19th century known by heart by
all members of the educated German middle class (Bildungsbrgertum), has become for
some German mathematicians something higher, an idea, like justice, like freedom. To
bring, provisionally, I repeat, to an end, these reections about the rising of the idea of
number, and since I mentioned Hegel in connection to Dedekind, let us quote some lines
out of the Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Geschichte:
Da die Weltgeschichte dieser Entwicklungsgang und das wirkliche Werden
des Geistes ist, unter dem wechselnden Schauspiele ihrer Geschichten dies
ist die wahre Theodizee, die Rechtfertigung Gottes in der Geschichte. Nur die
Einsicht kann den Geist mit der Weltgeschichte und der Wirklichkeit versh-
nen, da das, was geschehen ist und alle Tage geschieht, nicht nur nicht ohne
Gott, sondern wesentlich das Werk seiner selbst ist. [Hegel 19691971 vol. 12,
540]
Franois Chtelet, in his little book about Hegel, remarks that this thodice is
rather a noodice, that is a minds justication [Chtelet 1968, 162]. For our problem-
atic discussion it seems indeed hardly doubtful that the likes of Gauss, Jacobi, Kummer,
Dedekind, maybe even Cantor, who were all children of the minds divination arising
out of Fichtes and Schillers idealism, perceived numbers as the ospring of their in-
teriority, and considered their activity as mathematicians as a calling for mankind, the
whole of mankind, like the artists in Schillers poem. But in 1872, the real numbers year
of birth, this way of thinking was already outdated. Boeckh had died in 1867, having
been fought and eventually side-lined by the philologist Theodor Mommsen, who was
a specialist on Rome and the law, not like Boeckh on Greece and knowledge. He was
a convinced nationalist and fervent backer of German unity. In 1870, Bismarck did not
only realize Germanys unity. He also gave the German liberal middle class to understand
that nobleness of mind was of little value compared to the nobility of the great Prussian
landowners. The human mind (der menschliche Geist) had to admit its defeat before the
triumphant march (der Siegeszug!) of the German spirit (der deutsche Geist). So, when
Weierstrass exclaimed in 1873 our unforgettable Boeckh, things looked bad for the lat-
ters ideal, but German mathematicians had been keeping his heritage alive, in the rst
place by going through the cantorian paradise. And on that occasion, Leibnizs think-
ing was honoured again; but this will be the subject of another contribution. So we can
openly conclude, with reference to Goethes Shakespeare und kein Ende: in mathemat-
ics, Leibniz and no end.

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