Timeline for Riemann's quote cited by Lakatos: what is the context?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 3, 2014 at 16:46 | vote | accept | Claudio Gorodski | ||
| Jun 3, 2014 at 3:11 | comment | added | Achim Krause | Native German speaker here. "Schon" doesn't translate as "soon"; I agree with quid on "somehow" in that case. | |
| Jun 3, 2014 at 2:35 | answer | added | Ben Wieland | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jun 3, 2014 at 0:56 | answer | added | Suvrit | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 12, 2014 at 0:47 | comment | added | Claudio Gorodski | No, no context. Probably Riemann made an almost fortuitous comment, which Schwarz enjoyed and passed on to Holder, who published it. Then Lakatos and others cited and it's become what it is. | |
| Feb 12, 2014 at 0:29 | comment | added | Joël | Thanks Claudio. And Holder doesn't say anything about the context, I suppose? Interesting question, by the way... And it is is quite ironical that Riemann said so: after all, he had the statement of the Riemann hypothesis, and the proof didn't came "soon". | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 23:23 | comment | added | Claudio Gorodski | @Joël: of course I mean that Schwarz told Holder personally that Riemann had said that sentence. Sorry if I wasn't enough clear, but there's a size limit to the comment. | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 20:05 | comment | added | Joël | Claudio, I don't understand. Do you mean that the quotation is actually due to Schwarz, or that Schwarz told to Holder that Riemann said this sentence? | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 16:26 | comment | added | Claudio Gorodski | Thanks to quid for his effort. I did not find it in Google books. Miguel has the book and wrote to me with the answer. This is the chapter entitled 'The art of research', section 'Suppositions, conjectures, induction and analogy', where Holder discusses the advantage of making educated guesses before writing proofs, very similar to what is in Lakatos' book. The German original of the quote is exactly as in the comment by quid. The new information is a footnote, where Holder credits this to a private communication from H. A. Schwarz (1843-1921, of complex analysis fame). | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 16:12 | comment | added | Claudio Gorodski | Miguel has the book and wrote to me with the answer. | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 16:08 | comment | added | Joël | Dear quid, my German is rusty, but I don't see where the "somehow" in your translation comes from. "Soon" is a good translation for "schon" IMO. And "easily enough" is close in meaning, in this particular context. | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 15:53 | comment | added | user9072 | "Wenn ich nur erst die Sätze habe! Die Beweise werde ich schon finden." is given in didamath.com/docs/didaktikwzbw.pdf (It seems this is taken from the German translation of Lakatos's book. It matches the part of the quote that I can see on Google books of Hölder's book you mention.) To me this sounds a lot less confident than the English translation; and general quite a bit different. My rough translation would rather be: "Once/when I will have the theorems! The proofs I will manage to find somehow." Or put differently, the 'easy enough' is not there IMO. | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 15:24 | history | asked | Claudio Gorodski | CC BY-SA 3.0 |