Mathematics and Religion

Roundtable
Participants: Dominic Balestra, Loren Graham, Edward Nelson, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Max Tegmark




Theology and mathematical thinking have influenced each other in a variety of ways throughout history, exemplified in the mystical sect of Pythagoreans, the approach to God through a geometric infinite in de Cusa's work, the geometrical inspiration of Spinoza's philosophy, and the identification of God with "The Absolute" (the set of all sets) in Georg Cantor's new set theory at the end of the nineteenth century. This roundtable will consider these and more recent historical examples, particularly the influence of the mystical sect of Name Worshippers on the new Moscow School of Mathematics at the beginning of the twentieth century.


http://philoctetes.org/calendar/mathematics_and_religion/

Read more on the blog "Not Even Wrong"
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2324