The University of Chicago Press The History of Science Society

A Comparison of Two Cultural Approaches to Mathematics: France and Russia, 18901930
Author(s): Loren Graham and JeanMichel Kantor

Source: Isis, Vol. 97, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 56-74
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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A Comparison of Two Cultural

Approaches to Mathematics
France and Russia, 18901930
By Loren Graham* and Jean-Michel Kantor**
ABSTRACT
Many people would like to know where scientific ideas come from and how they arise. In
the case of mathematics, new ideas often come in the form of new mathematical objects:
groups, vector spaces, sets, etc. Some people think these new objects are invented, others
that they are discovered. By exploring the birth of descriptive set theory in France and
Russia in the period 18901930 we show that the leading French mathematicians worked
within a rational, secular worldview that made them doubt the legitimacy of infinite sets,
particularly nondenumerable ones; on the other hand, the creators of the famous Moscow
school of mathematics, particularly those who subscribed to a religious doctrine known
as name-worshipping, believed that humans had absolute freedom to invent mathematical objects. Partly as a result of their different cultural environments, the French and the
Russians took different approaches to the same problem. In the end the Russians created
a new field, descriptive set theory, at a time when the French remained hesitant.
. . . das Wesen der Mathematik liegt gerade in ihrer Freiheit ( . . . the essence of
mathematics resides in its freedom).1
Georg Cantor, 1883
ANY PEOPLE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW where new scientific ideas come from
and how they arise. This subject is of interest to scientists, of course, and to historians
and philosophers of science, psychologists, and many others. In the case of mathematics,
* Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Building E51, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139; [email protected].
** Institut de Mathematiques de Jussieu, Projet de Theorie des Nombres, Case 247, 4 Place Jussieu-75252
Paris Cedex, France; [email protected].
We are grateful for comments and help to Bernard Bru, S. S. Demidov, Donald Fanger, Barry Mazur, Charles
Ford, Michael Gordin, Helen Repina, Yevgenia Albats, Natalia Ermolaeva, Mark Kramer, Susan Bleich Gardos,
Peter Buck, George Levinton, Marjorie Senechal, Roger Cooke, John Murdoch, and Olga Kobenko. We alone
are, of course, responsible for any errors that remain.
1
ber unendliche, lineare Punktmannichfaltigkeiten, Mathematische Annalen, 1883, 21:545
Georg Cantor, U
591, on p. 545. Here and throughout this essay, translations are our own unless otherwise indicated.
Isis, 2006, 97:5674
2006 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.
0021-1753/2006/9701-0003$10.00
56

LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR
57
new ideas often come in the form of new mathematical objects: groups, vector spaces,
sets, and so forth. Some people think these new objects are invented in the brains of
mathematicians; others believe they are in some sense discovered, perhaps in a Platonistic
world. We think it would be interesting to study how these questions have been confronted
by two different groups of mathematicians working on the same problems at the same
time, but in two contrasting cultural environments. Will the particular environment influence the way mathematicians in each of the two groups see their work and perhaps even
help them reach different conclusions? In this essay we explore this issue in France and
Russia in the period 18901930 with particular attention to the birth of the descriptive
theory of sets.2
In the Russian case, we have found that a particular theological viewthat of the Name
Worshippersplayed a role in discussions of the nature of mathematics. Unlike their
French colleagues, who subscribed to rationalistic and secular principles, Russian mathematicians influenced by this theological viewpoint believed that they had freedom to create
mathematical objects.
Thus we are brought to the subject of religion and science, about which so much has
been written. Often that literature has centered on the question of whether religion and
science are in conflict or harmony.3 Answering this question is not our concern, and,
in fact, we consider it simplistic. We could cite episodes in the history of science when
many people would say that religion conflicted with science (e.g., the cases of Galileo
2
Set theory is the mathematical science of the infinite; it starts from scratch with sets. A set is any well-defined
collection of objects (the elements belonging to the set); the collection can be finite or infinite; correspondences
between sets are functions; if there exists a one-to-one correspondence between two sets they are said to have
the same cardinal number (this number can be infinite). For example, any set in one-to-one correspondence with
the set of integers is said to be denumerable; its cardinal is a0. This is the way Cantor typically defined cardinal
numbers (ordinal numbers are defined similarly for sets with a given order between their elements). Transfinite
numbers are any of these cardinal or ordinal numbers constructed through various operations and compared,
when possible, with each other. They were introduced by Cantor in 1882 in close connection with philosophical
and even religious considerations about the Absolute. This was the first introduction of infinity in mathematics
(where it was called the actual infinite in opposition, following Aristotle, to the potential infinite, thought
of as a limit process). Set theory was born from the study of point sets of the real line. Later, as we will see, the
efforts to describe and classify such sets would lead to descriptive set theory (see note 56, below). See Jose
Ferreiros, Labyrinth of Thought: A History of Set Theory and Its Role in Modern Mathematics (Basel/Boston:
Birkhauser, 1999); Walter Purkert, Georg Cantor und die Antinomien der Mengenlehre, Bulletin de la Societe
Mathematique de Belgique, 1986, 38:313327; and Purkert, Georg Cantor, 18451918 (Basel/Boston: Birkhauser, 1987).
3
There are hundreds of books on religion and science. A few that deserve notice are John Hedley Brooke,
Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); Edward J.
Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1989); Michael Ruse, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Relationship between Science and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001); Frederick Gregory, Nature Lost? Natural Science and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992); Max Jammer,
Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999); Louis Chatellier,
Les espaces infinis et le silence de Dieu: Science et religion XVIeXIXe sie`cle (Paris: Aubier, 2003); C. Chevalley,
Pascal, contingence et probabilites (Paris: Presses Univ. France, 1995); T. Levy, Figures de linfini: Les mathematiques au regard des cultures (Paris: Seuil, 1987); P. P. Gaidenko and V. N. Katanosov, eds., Nauka, filosofiia,
religiia: V poiskakh obshchego znamenatelia (Moscow: IF RAN, 2003); and Stefan Blinderhofer, Naturwissen berschuss der Schopfungsperspektive (Frankfurt: Lang, 2000). An older book
schaftlicher Weltzugang und der U
that is still of value is Charles Coulston Gillispie, Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific
Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 17901850 (1951; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1969). The classic statement of the conflict thesis is Andrew Dickson White, A History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: Appleton, 1896; Buffalo: Prometheus, 1993). A
book that revised the warfare model is David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature:
Historical Perspectives on the Encounter between Science and Christianity (Berkeley: Univ. California Press,
1986).

58
A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS
and Darwin) and others when many would say that religion and science seemed to be in
harmony (e.g., the cases of Newton and Pascal). We prefer, then, to look at the context
and details of individual cases, without prejudging the issue. We do not consider this article
to be an argument either for or against religion.
Our thesis is that the secular and rationalist culture of France worked against mathematicians acceptance of infinite sets (in particular, nondenumerable ones) as legitimate
mathematical objects, while the mystical religious views of the founders of the Moscow
School of Mathematics acted as a positive influence in such acceptance. The leading French
mathematicians we will examine are Rene Baire (18741932), Henri Lebesgue (1875
1944), and Emile Borel (18751956). The leading Russian mathematicians we will consider are Dmitrii Egorov (18691931) and Nikolai Luzin (18831950). It is also necessary
to look at the influence of Egorovs and Luzins friend and colleague Pavel Florenskii
(18821937), who left mathematics for the priesthood. It was the acceptance by these
men, especially Luzin, of transfinite numbers as legitimate mathematical objects that
boosted the development of the theory of functions of a real variable and led to the birth
of the Moscow School of Mathematics, one of the major influences in twentieth-century
mathematics.
We will start with France, then move to Russia, and then give our conclusions.
SET THEORY IN CARTESIAN FRANCE
Set theory was first developed in Germany by Georg Cantor in the last part of the nineteenth
century. Among the contributors whose work facilitated its emergence, the most important
from the point of view of this essay is the philosopher, theologian, and mathematician
Bernard Bolzano, who introduced the word set (die Menge) and defended the concept
of the actual infinite. Cantors ideas became known in France almost immediately,
though they were not welcomed; most French mathematicians were not ready for this new
mathematics coming from their powerful neighboring country. Charles Hermite and Paul
Appell, for example, initially opposed the translation of Cantors work into French. When
pressed on the matter, Hermite suggested as translator abbe Joseph Dargent, a Jesuit priest
at Saint-Sulpice, observing that [Cantors] philosophical turn of mind will not be an
obstacle for a translator who knows Kant.4 Hermite and Appell clearly thought that Cantors work was more German metaphysics than mathematics. In fact, philosophers such as
Louis Couturat, a one-time student of Henri Poincare, and Paul Tannery were among the
first French scholars to become interested in Cantors ideas. They then attracted the reluctant attention of mathematicians (such as Jules Tannery, Pauls brother).
French mathematicians were not all hostile to Cantors set theory to the same degree,
however, and a few became intrigued by some of its implications even if they remained
unwilling to grant it full acceptance. Gradually some notions from set theory began to
creep into the work of French mathematicians such as Emile Borel, but at first applied to
point sets (collections of points on the real line) more than to abstract set theory itself.
Camille Jordan introduced some set theory in the second edition of the textbook that grew
out of his course in analysis at the Ecole Polytechnique around 1885.5
4
Leur tournure philosophique ne sera pas un obstacle pour le traducteur qui connat Kant: Charles Hermite,
Lettres a` G. Mittag-Leffler publiees et annotees par Pierre Dugac, Cahiers du Seminaire dHistoire de Mathematiques, 1980, 5:49285. On Bolzanos contribution to set theory see Bernard Bolzano, Les paradoxes de
linfini (Paris: Seuil, 1993); and J. Sebestik, Logique et mathematique chez Bernard Bolzano (Paris: Vrin, 1992).
5
Camille Jordan, Cours danalyse de lEcole polytechnique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 18931896).

59
The patriarch of French mathematics, Henri Poincare, might have been expected to be
somewhat more receptive to Cantors work, since Poincare was a very learned philosopher
of science and was strongly influenced by Kant. One can detect Cantors influence, for
example, in Poincares famous memoir of 1890. However, Poincare relied mostly on intuition, and he opposed, sometimes aggressively, the logicist trend whose proponents
(Bertrand Russell, Louis Couturat, Giuseppe Peano) sought to reduce mathematics to logic.
Couturat even accused Poincare of adopting nominalism (a philosophy dating to the scholastic period of the Middle Ages, indirectly connected to the issue of naming that concerned the Russian mathematicians we will discuss in this essay). Poincare refused to
recognize transfinite numbers but accepted the law of excluded middle.6 His rejection of
actual infinity, his strong opinions, and his age all put him outside the mainstream of the
discussions of set theory.
Meanwhile, Rene Baire, a rigorous mathematician working in the tradition of Borel,
Augustin-Louis Cauchy, and Italian mathematicians like Vito Volterra and Corrado Gini,
was preparing a major twist in the theory of functions that relied on some concepts from
the new set theory that he found acceptable. Until Baires work, functions were understood
in Eulers sense.7 Baire dared to look at discontinuous functions and began to classify their
mysterious behavior. But the French mathematical establishment was strongly resistant;
Emile Picard, for example, despite his remarkable talent in mathematics and his general
broad-mindedness, rejected discontinuous functions for many years. In 1898 he remarked
of Baires thesis: The author seems to have a turn of mind favoring those questions which
are on the borderline between mathematics and philosophy. In connecting Baires work
with philosophy, rather than mathematics, Picard was using the key word in the contemptuous critique of set theory. Philosophy was soft and unrigorous, not a suitable preoccupation for a mathematician. Later, in 1902, Picard reported on Lebesgues work with
similar dismay: One is struck by vertigo when one sees the result that comes from abandoning usual hypotheses. As late as 1905 Picard still rejected discontinuous functions,
observing that nature does not make jumps; we have the feeling, one can even say the
belief, that in nature there is no place for discontinuity.8
Borel, on the other hand, was initially more receptive to set theory. First a student, then
6
For the 1890 memoir see Henri Poincare, Sur le proble`me des trois corps et les equations de la dynamique,
Acta Mathematica, 1890, 13:1270; see also A. Robadey, Exploration dun mode decriture de la generalite:
Larticle de Poincare sur les lignes geodesiques des surfaces convexes (1905), Revue dHistoire des Mathematiques, 2004, 10:257318. The law of excluded middle (tertium non datur) states that for any proposition P,
P or (not P) is true. It goes back to Aristotelian logic and would later be rejected by supporters of the intuitionist
current in mathematics.
7
I.e., they were represented by a continuous line with tangents everywhere except at a finite number of points.
Discontinuous functions present jumps in their corresponding graphs. On the history of the theory of functions
see (from one of our main characters) Nikolai Luzin, Function, American Mathematical Monthly, 1988,
105:5967 (Pt. 1), 263270 (Pt. 2) (this text is translated by A. Schenitzer from the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia
of 1934); and, more recently, Fyodor A Medvedev, Scenes from the History of Real Functions, trans. Roger
Cooke (Boston: Birkhauser, 1991).
8
Lauteur nous parat avoir une tournure desprit favorable a` letude de ces questions qui sont a` la frontie`re
de la mathematique et de la philosophie: quoted in Hele`ne Gispert, ed., La France mathematique: La Societe
mathematique de France (18721914) (Paris: Societe Francaise dHistoire des Sciences et des Techniques/
Societe Mathematique de France, 1991), p. 375. On est parfois saisi de vertige en voyant a` quels resultats on
arrive quand on abandonne les hypothe`ses usuelles: ibid., p. 284. Natura non facit saltus, nous avons le
sentiment, on pourrait dire la croyance, que dans la nature il ny a pas de place pour la discontinuite: Emile
Picard, La science moderne et son etat actuel (Paris: Flammarion, 1905), Ch. 2: Sciences mathematiques et
astronomie, p. 54. The thought that nature does not make jumps has been expressed by many writers, including
Aristotle and Leibniz, but the Latin phrase Natura non facit saltus comes from Carl von Linne, Philosophia
Botanica (Stockholm: Kiesewetter, 1751), aphorism 77.

60
a professor, and ultimately the director of the Ecole Normale Superieure, Borel was a
central figure in the intellectual and political life of France for more than fifty years. Raised
in the rural southwestern province of Rouerge, he rose very quickly in both mathematical
and administrative circles and eventually became a deputy minister of France.9
As a young mathematician Borel was captivated by Cantors work. In his 1895 thesis
he solved a problem of function theory using a result on limit points (which later would
be called Heine-Borels theorem), and he was the first to teach a course in set theory at
the Ecole Normale Superieure (Lebesgue was among those in attendance). The same year
Borel met Cantor and at first rhapsodized about him; as he later confessed, I was completely seduced when I was twenty by reading the works of Cantor. . . . Georg Cantor
brought to the study of mathematics that romantic spirit which is one of the most attractive
aspects of the German soul.10
However, as Borel continued his studies his resistance to Cantor began to grow. Part of
his reluctance may have stemmed from conversations with his French colleagues, many
of whom remained skeptical of the philosophical tenor of Cantors views. In addition,
Borel had a down-to-earth approach to mathematics, perhaps the legacy of his upbringing
in rural France. Cantors transfinite Alephs were decidedly not down to earth.11
The unease of French mathematicians with set theory was deepened by their observation
that the study of Cantors Alephs might cause mental disturbances. Cantor had his first
serious attack of depression in 1884, and Baire, who already had some digestive problems,
fell badly ill in 1898, as if being punished for his flirtation with the new ideas. Borel, after
referring to the illnesses of Cantor and Baire, told his friend Paul Valery in 1924 that he
had to abandon set theory because of the fatigue it caused him, which made him fear and
foresee in himself serious illness if he persisted in that work. Baire stopped working in
1900, became neurasthenic, and ultimately, in 1932, killed himself.12
At the second International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Paris in 1900, the
German mathematician David Hilbert presented a group of unsolved problems that remain
well known to the present day.13 The essence of the first problem that Hilbert posed was
the mystery of the continuum. The Continuum Hypothesis asked whether any nondenumerable subset of the real line (the continuum) had the power (the cardinal) of the
continuum. This question had been on Cantors mind since the 1880s; at that time he had
developed a strategic approach that consisted in looking carefully at more and more complex subsets of the real line, an approach that would lead to descriptive set theory. The
9
See P. Guiraldenq, Emile Borel, 18711956: Lespace et le temps dune vie sur deux sie`cles (Saint-Affrique:
Progre`s, 1999).
10
Jai ete extremement seduit, de`s lage de 20 ans, par la lecture des travaux de Cantor. . . . Georg Cantor a
apporte dans letudes des mathematiques cet esprit romantique qui est lun des cotes les plus seduisants de lame
allemande: Emile Borel, Oeuvres comple`tes (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,
1972), Vol. 4, p. 2101. Limit points are obtained as limits of a sequence of points: for example, 0 is the limit of
the sequence of points (1/n); as n gets bigger the points representing 1/n come closer to the origin.
11
Normal numbers, e.g., would count as down to earth; see note 33, below.
12
. . . a` cause de la fatigue quelle lui imposait et qui lui faisait craindre des troubles serieux sil sobstinait
a` ce travail: Paul Vale`ry, Cahiers, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 797; quoted in P. Dugac, Histoire de
lanalyse (Paris: Vuibert, 2003), p. 253. On Baires difficulties see the letter he sent to his brother in June 1932
and allusions to his very probable suicide: Dugac, Notes et documents sur la vie et loeuvre de Rene Baire,
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 1976, 15:297383, on p. 313.
13
David Hilbert, Sur les proble`mes futurs des mathematiques, trans. L. Laugel, in Compte-rendu du deuxie`me
congre`s international des mathematiciens (Paris: Congre`s International des Mathematiciens, 1900), pp. 58114;
shortly before the mathematics congress there was an international congress of philosophy in which the mathematicians Borel, Poincare, and Jacques Hadamard participated.

61
problem had a strong geometrical aspect, although there had been efforts in the past century
(e.g., by Karl Weierstrass and Richard Dedekind) to arithmetize the continuum (to construct real numbers without relying on any geometrical intuition).14
Henri Lebesgue took an entirely geometrical approach to all mathematics; when he
became interested in functions, it was because he saw deep connections with geometry:
There are connections which I feel to be very close between the general theory of functions of a real variable and pure geometry, but they remain a little mysterious to me. From
1894 to 1897 Lebesgue was at the Ecole Normale Superieure, where Borel was his friend.
Courageously picking up the study of functions of a real variable at about the time that
Borel was losing his nerve, Lebesgue moved into opposition to the old school (Camille
Jordan, Gaston Darboux), which was reluctant to study the monsters appearing in the
field. His fruitful approach was to compare the classification of functions constructed by
Baire with the recently developed measure theory of Borel.15
The Axiom of Choice and the Cinq lettres sur la theorie des ensembles
On 26 September 1904 the German mathematician Ernst Zermelo wrote to David Hilbert
and told him that he had developed a proof that any set can be well-ordered.16 His proof
used what would later be called the Axiom of Choice: For any family of nonempty sets
there exists a correspondence that associates to each of these sets one of its elements.
Zermelos announcement had the effect of a thunderclap, in part because of its simplicity.
As Lebesgue observed, Zermelo arrived and the fight began! Zermelos proclamation
stimulated a debate that lasted for more than ten years. The starting point in the controversy
was an exchange of five letters among four French mathematicians in 1905.17
Jacques Hadamard was the only one of the four mathematicians who did not completely
oppose Zermelos axiom. He took a very personal approach, saying that the question of
what is a correspondence that can be described is a matter of psychology and relates to a
property of the mind outside the domain of mathematics.18 Needless to say, this view only
increased the critics hostility.
14
Cantor showed in 1874 that the set of all real numbers (represented by the continuum of the straight line)
is not denumerable. In other words, there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between all integers and all
real numbers. This conclusion led him to the Continuum Hypothesis, in which he asked whether any part of the
continuum could be put in one-to-one correspondence either with the set of integers or with the whole line. For
one arithmetical approach see R. Dedekind, Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1872).
15
Il y a entre la theorie generale des fonctions de variables reelles et la geometrie pure des liens que je sens
etroits, encore quils restent un peu mysterieux pour moi: introduction a` la Notice sur les travaux scientifiques
de M. Henri Lebesgue de 1922 (unpublished), in Lebesgue, Oeuvres comple`tes (Gene`ve: LEnseignement
Mathematique, 19721973), Vol. 1, p. 90. For a detailed analysis of Borels and Lebesgues work on measure
theory (which studies how to extend the notion of length of intervals to highly complex parts of the continuum)
see G. H. Moore, Lebesgues Measure Problem and Zermelos Axiom of Choice: The Mathematical Effects of
a Philosophical Dispute, in History and Philosophy of Science: Selected Papers (Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, 412) (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1983), pp. 129154. On the classification of functions see R. Baire, Oeuvres scientifiques, ed. P. Lelong with P. Dugac (Paris: Gauthiers-Villars,
1990).
16
An ordered set is a set where any two elements can be compared with respect to an order relation; a
well-ordered set is an ordered set with similar properties as the set of positive integers. E. Zermelo, Beweis,
dass jede Menge wohlgeordnet warden kann (Aus einem an Herrn Hilbert gerichteten Briefe), Math. Ann., 1904,
59:514516. See also G. H. Moore, Zermelos Axiom of Choice: Its Origin, Development, and Influence (Berlin:
Springer, 1990).
17
Zermelo arriva, et ce fut la bagarre: H. Lebesgue, Oeuvres scientifiques (Gene`ve: LEnseignement Mathematique, 19721973), p. 294. The letters were published as J. Hadamard, R. Baire, H. Lebesgue, and E. Borel,
Cinq lettres sur la theorie des ensembles, Bulletin de la Societe Mathematique de France, 1905, 23:261273.
18
La notion de correspondance qui peut etre decrite est en dehors des mathematiques, rele`ve du domaine de
la psychologie et est relative a` une propriete de notre esprit: Hadamard et al., Cinq lettres sur la theorie des
ensembles, letter 1.

62
Lebesgue was strictly opposed to the use of the Axiom of Choice. He maintained that
to analyze a set is to analyze objects in a bag C; we know only that the objects in the
bag C have a property B in common that others do not have. Consequently, we do not
know anything which allows us to define any order among them. One does not even know
how to distinguish them.19
It quickly became clear that the use of the Axiom of Choice led to new mathematical
paradoxessoon called antinomies, to indicate their philosophical importance. Already
mathematicians were wrestling with Cesare Burali-Fortis paradox of 1897 and Bertrand
Russells paradoxes of 19021903; with the appearance of the Axiom of Choice, they
found themselves facing J. Richards paradox about the definition of a number that cannot
be defined (!) and even geometrical paradoxes.20 Such problems aroused the opposition of
Borel and Lebesgue, later referred to by the intuitionist school of the Dutch mathematician
L. E. J. Brouwer as the French preintuitionists.21
The discussions among Baire, Lebesgue, Borel, and Hadamard became very intricate,
mixing philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. The debates continued over many years,
without any resolution, and were featured in numerous articles in widely distributed journals. In 1912, in correspondence with Borel, Hadamard even drew a connection between
the truth of the Axiom of Choice and the existence of Brownian motion!22
The central issue was spelled out clearly in Lebesgues letter of 1905. He showed that
the Axiom of Choice is equivalent to the well-ordering principle and then asked, Can we
convince ourselves of the existence of a mathematical being without defining it? To define
always means naming a characteristic property of what is being defined.23 It was clear,
then, that the ontological status of mathematical objects was at stake.
Picard, a strict opponent of set theory, was ironical but correct in his summary of the
situation:
These speculations about infinity are a completely new chapter in the history of mathematics
of recent years, but it is necessary to recognize that this chapter does not escape paradoxes.
Thus, one can define certain numbers that belong, and at the same time do not belong, to
specific sets. All problems of this type are caused by a lack of agreement on what existence
means. Some believers in set theory are scholastics who would have loved to discuss the proofs
of the existence of God with Saint Anselme and his opponent Gaunilon, the monk of Noirmoutiers.24
19
Raisonner sur un ensemble cest raisonner sur des objets pris dans un sac C sur lesquels on sait seulement
quils ont une propriete B en commun nappartenant pas aux autres objets de C. On ne sait par consequent rien
qui permette daborder la definition de lordre des elements; on ne sait meme pas les distinguer: Henri Lebesgue
to Emile Borel, Feb. 1905, in Lebesgue, Les lendemains de lintegrale: Lettres a` Emile Borel (Paris: Vuibert,
2004), p. 101.
20
C. Burali-Forti, Una questione sui numeri transfiniti, Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo, 1897,
11:154164; B. Russell, On Some Difficulties in the Theory of Transfinite Numbers and Order Types, London
Mathematical Society, 1906, 4:2953; and J. Richard, Lettre a` Monsieur le redacteur, Revue Generale des
Sciences, June 1905, 12:12. For all three references see also Ferreiros, Labyrinth of Thought (cit. n. 2).
21
See, e.g., A. Heyting, Les fondements des mathematiques: Intuitionnisme, theorie de la demonstration (Paris:
Gauthier-Villars, 1955). A thorough philosophical discussion has been offered by J. Bouveresse, Sur les sens
du mot platonisme dans lexpression platonisme mathematique, paper presented at a conference of the Societe
romande de philosophie, groupe genevois, University of Gene`ve, 19 Nov. 1998; see http://un2sg4.unige.ch/
athena/bouveresse/bou_plat.html.
22
The connection drawn by Hadamard is reported by E. Borel in Linfini mathematique et la realite, Revue
du Mois, 1914, 18:7184. See Emile Borel: Philosophe et homme daction, pages choisies et presentees par M.
Frechet (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1967), p. 183.
23
Peut-on sassurer de lexistence dun etre mathematique sans le definir? Definir veut toujours dire nommer
une propriete du defini: Hadamard et al., Cinq lettres sur la theorie des ensembles (cit. n. 17).
24
Ces speculations sur linfini forment un chapitre tout nouveau dans la science mathematique de ces dernie`res

63
(Here Picard was raising the issue of religion in order to discredit set theory; the Russian
mathematicians, on the other hand, would appeal to religion in order to strengthen set
theory.)
It is strange and striking that Baire and Borel, who had shown courage in their recent
work by using the transfinites of set theory, now in the fight occasioned by Zermelos
axiom contradicted what was implicit in their earlier views. This contradiction has also
been noted by Gregory Moore with respect to measure of sets and to the work of Lebesgue
and Borel and, later, Waclaw Sierpinski; over the following years Baire and Borel would
retreat even further, rejecting not only the Axiom of Choice but also the use of transfinite
numbers. As late as 1908 Borel still opposed the use of nondenumerable infinities.25
This contradiction calls for an explanation. Why did prominent French mathematiciansnot only those like Picard, who had never wavered in their opposition to set theory,
but also some, like Baire and Borel, who had flirted with some aspects of itmove toward
greater and greater resistance?
A Strange Mix of Negative Feedback
In our opinion, French mathematicians were being influenced by negative feedback arising
from the cultural and philosophical milieu of their country. This interpretation is strengthened by comparing the reception of set theory in France to that in other countries.26 We
believe that three different influences were at work in Francesometimes pulling in opposite directions; these were mediated through close connections (sometimes even family
connections) between mathematicians and philosophers and by the closed, centralized
educational system, especially that of the Ecole Normale Superieure and the Ecole Polytechnique. Those three influences are Descartes, positivism, and Pascal.
First of all, France is the country of Descartes, the true protector of French thinkers and
scientists. In the period we are examining there was even a strong identification with
Descartes among the radical left, of which Borel was an active member.27 According to
Descartes, one must
divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might
be necessary for its adequate solution. To conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend little by little, and, as it
were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex, assigning in thought a certain order
even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and
sequence.
annees, mais il faut reconnatre que ce chapitre nest pas exempt de paradoxes. Cest ainsi que lon a pu definir
certains nombres appartenant et nappartenant pas tout a` la fois a` des ensembles determines. Toutes les difficultes
de ce genre resultent de ce quon ne sentend pas sur le mot existence. Certains adeptes de la theorie des ensembles
sont des scolastiques, qui auraient aime a` discuter les preuves de lexistence de Dieu, avec Saint-Anselme et son
contradicteur, le moine de Noirmoutiers. E. Picard, La science moderne et son etat (Paris: Flammarion, 1909),
extract from Ch. 2. See Anselme de Cantorbery, Proslogion Allocution sur lexistence de Dieu suivi de sa
refutation par Gaunilon et de la reponse dAnselme (Paris: Flammarion, 1993).
25
Borels rejection of the Axiom of Choice was spelled out in Atti del IV Congresso Internazionale dei
Matematici: Roma, 611 Apr. 1908 (Rome: Tip. Della R. Accademia dei Lincei, 1909), Vol. 2, pp. 1517. His
opposition to nondenumerable infinities is maintained throughout the prefaces of all four later editions of his
famous Lecons sur la theorie des fonctions up to 1950; see, e.g., Lecons sur la theorie des fonctions (Elements
et principes de la theorie des ensembles: Applications a` la theorie des fonctions), 3rd ed. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars,
1928). See Moore, Zermelos Axiom of Choice (cit. n. 16).
26
See Moore, Zermelos Axiom of Choice, for more positive reactions in England, Germany, Italy, and the
United States.
27
The tradition of democracy and an emphasis on the importance of education were revived during the Dreyfus
controversy, in which many friends of Borel participated.

64
Every problem should be decomposed into its simple components, and thought means
clarity. The same principle of analysis and expression was taught to every schoolchild in
France; in the words of the seventeenth-century literary critic Nicolas Boileau, Anything
that is understood well can be expressed clearly, and the words then come easily.28
One can see the strength of Descartess influence in the numerous articles and speeches
that honored his memory during the period we are examining. For example, on the threehundredth anniversary of Descartess death Picard, the outspoken opponent of set theory,
proclaimed, I always had, as is appropriate, an infinite respect for Descartes. One must
judge Descartes on the completely new orientation he gave to science by his genius-like
intuitions and by his method.29
Descartes was also an influential proponent of the view that mathematics was the universal and least biased form of knowledge. Borel was defending this view when he remarked, during the discussions of set theory, that as long as we are dealing with mathematics and not philosophy, disagreement can only stem from misunderstanding.30 Borel
and other French mathematicians wanted, as far as possible, to segregate philosophical
and mathematical questions. The Russian mathematicians we will be examining wanted
to integrate philosophicalindeed, religiousissues with mathematics.
A second important influence among French mathematicians was positivism. The end
of the nineteenth century saw the triumph of August Comtes positivism not only at the
Sorbonne but throughout French education; the educational system was reformed in 1902.31
According to Comte, once science liberates itself from all metaphysical influences and
enters the positive stage, its goal is no longer a metaphysical quest for truth or a rational
theory purporting to represent reality. Instead, science is composed of laws (correlations
of observable facts) that can be used by the scientist without regard to the nature of reality.
The influence of Pascal, although less important than that of Cartesianism and positivism, and sometimes in contradiction to them, can be seen, for example, in the distinction
between definition de noms et definition de chosesthe definition of names and the
definition of things. Pascal was also opposed to Descartess belief in final causes. He
held that there is no absolute truth, just geometrical clarity (he understood geometry
very broadly; for example, he called the theory of probability that he created geometrie
du hazard or aleae geometria). The importance of geometry within the French mathematical tradition would strengthen the hand of Lebesgue and Borel in their fight against
rules without geometric foundations of the sort expressed by logicians like Russell and
Couturat.32
28
. . . diviser chacune des difficultes que jexaminerais, en autant de parcelles quil se pourrait, et quil serait
requis pour les mieux resoudre. S conduire par ordre mes pensees, en commencant par les objets les plus simples
et les plus aises a` connatre, pour monter peu a` peu, comme par degres, jusque la connaissance des plus composes;
et supposant meme de lordre entre ceux qui ne se prece`dent point naturellement les uns et les autres to: Rene
Descartes, Discours de la methode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la verite dans les sciences (Paris:
Michel Bobin et Nicolas Le gras, 1668). Ce qui se concoit bien senonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire
arrivent aisement: Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, Les quatre poetiques dAristote, dHorace, de Vida, de Despreaux (Paris: Saillant et Nyon-Desaint, 1771), Vol. 1, p. 153.
29
Jai toujours eu, comme il convient, un respect infini pour Descartes. . . . Il faut juger Descartes savant sur
lorientation toute nouvelle donnee a` la science par ses intuitions geniales et par une methode: E. Picard, Une
edition nouvelle du discourse de la methode de Descartes (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1934), p. 54.
30
De`s lors quil sagit de mathematiques et non de philosophie, le desaccord ne peut provenir que dun
malentendu: Borel, Linfini mathematique et la realite (cit. n. 22), p. 73.
31
See B. Belhoste, Lenseignement secondaire francais et les sciences au debut du XXe sie`cle: La reforme
de 1902 des plans detudes et des programmes, Revue dHistoire des Sciences, 1990, 53(4):371400.
32
For a thorough analysis of Pascals differences with Descartes on the nature of mathematics see Catherine
Chevalley, Contingence et probabilites (Paris: Presses Univ. France, 1995).

65
These various influences warned French mathematicians against mixing psychology or

philosophyfar less religionwith mathematics; instead, mathematical notions were to
be restricted to those for which both a clear definition and a clear representation in the
mind could be found. Borel abandoned set theory and concentrated on specific concrete
issues such as the existence of normal numbers.33 Lebesgue restricted his work to effective
sets, precisely defined in an explicit way. But he continued to be attracted to the geometric
mysteries of the continuum, and it is poignant to see how his reluctance to follow through
on his early intuitions forced him into a mistake he could have avoided very easily.34 This
mistake would be recognized and corrected twelve years later by the Russian mathematicians Mikhail Suslin and Nikolai Luzin, who welcomed set theory and were prepared to
pursue its implications.
RUSSIAN MYSTICISM AND MATHEMATICS
Dmitrii Fedorovich Egorov and Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin were the founders of the Moscow School of Mathematics.35 In the first years of the twentieth century Luzin studied
mathematics at Moscow University under Egorov, along with another person who was
influential in forming the ideas of the Moscow School, Pavel Florenskii. In their mature
and professionally active years all three of these men were deeply religious.36 Disappointing his teachers, Florenskii abandoned mathematics for religious studies and became a
priest. Egorov and Luzin went on to become outstanding mathematicians who helped create
an explosion of mathematical research in Moscow in the 1920s and early 1930s. Florenskii
and Egorov would eventually be arrested by the Communist authorities and accused of
mixing mathematics and religion; they subsequently died in prison.37 (It is one of the cruel
33
Normal numbers are numberssay, between 0 and 1that, if written in decimal expansion, present each
sequence of n letters with the frequency that would be expected for random numbers. They were introduced
by Borel (Lecons sur la theorie des fonctions [Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1914], p. 197). Absolutely normal numbers
are numbers that have the analogous property on any basis of expansion (not only decimal expansion). Although
the absolutely normal numbers have measure 1, it is difficult to give explicit (effective was the word used
then) constructions. For references and recent progress see V. Becher and S. Figueira, An Example of a Computable Absolutely Normal Number, Theoretical Computer Science, 2002, 270:948958.
34
See Jean-Michel Kantor, Dans le gouffre du continu, in preparation.
35
Allen Shields, Years Ago: Luzin and Egorov, Mathematical Intelligencer, 1987, 9:2427; Smilka Zdravkovska and Peter L. Duren, eds., Golden Years of Moscow Mathematics (Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 1993); Alexander Vucinich, Mathematics and Dialectics in the Soviet Union: The Pre-Stalin
Period, Historia Mathematica, 1999, 26:107124; and P. S. Aleksandrov, Matematika v SSSR za 15 let (Moscow: Gostekhizdat, 1932).
36
It is hardly necessary to prove the importance of religion to Florenskii, a priest; his best-known published
statement of faith is probably to be found in his Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny (Moscow: Put, 1914), published in
English as The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997).
The deep religiosity of Egorov is described in S. S. Demidov, Professor Moskovskogo universiteta Dmitrii
Fedorovich Egorov i imiaslavie v Rossii v pervoi treti XX stoletiia, Istoriko-Matematicheskie Issledovaniia,
2nd Ser., 1999, 39:123156, esp. p. 137. Luzins conversion by Florenskii to a religious viewpoint is described
in various sources, including Charles Ford, The Influence of P. A. Florensky on N. N. Luzin, Hist. Math.,
1998, 25:332339. See also Ford, Dmitrii Egorov: Mathematics and Religion in Moscow, Math. Intelligencer,
1991, 13:2430. Ford has done very valuable work on this topic, and we are grateful for his assistance, but we
do not agree with him that Egorovs deep religious views and mathematical conceptions were unconnected.
37
Florenskii was first arrested in 1928, then released, then arrested again in 1933 and sentenced to ten years
in labor camps in Siberia. He was executed on 8 Aug. 1937. In 1956 he was rehabilitated, and since then he has
slowly gained attention as a philosopher of language and culture, a theologian, and, most recently, an influence
on Russian mathematics. See Richard Gustafson, Introduction, in Florenskii, Pillar and Ground of the Truth,
trans. Jakim, pp. ixxxiii. Egorov was rebuked by the Communist Party in 1929, arrested in 1930, and sent to
prison. There he went on a hunger strike. Just before his death he was taken under guard to a hospital in Kazan;
he died on 10 Sept. 1931. We are told that he died in the arms of the wife of the mathematician N. G. Chebotaryov,

66
ironies of history that the charge against Florenskii and Egorov was true but thatcontrary
to the assumption of their Communist accusersthis mixture would be amazingly fruitful
for the development of mathematics.) Luzin, put on trial for ideological deviations, narrowly escaped imprisonment.38 Of these three, it was Florenskii, the priest, who most
prominently developed a new ideology of mathematics and religion that played a role in
the pioneering mathematical work of Egorov, Luzin, and their students.
From 1905 to 1908 Luzin underwent a psychological crisis so severe that several times
he contemplated suicide. One precipitating event was the unsuccessful Russian Revolution
of 1905, a moment that sobered many leftwing members of the intelligentsia who had
talked romantically of their hopes for a revolution without comprehending the violence
such eruptions typically bring. For these intellectuals, 1905 was a year of truth. Luzin was
shaken not only by the shedding of blood but also by personally witnessing poverty. He
was particularly shocked to see poor women resort to prostitution in order obtain food.39
Luzin possessed a tender, somewhat naive personality, and he was not prepared for the
pain he saw around him during and immediately after the abortive revolution. In an effort
to move him beyond his spiritual crisis, his teacher Egorov sent him abroad in December
1905, but the trip did not solve Luzins spiritual and intellectual problems. His faith in
science and mathematics had collapsed. He was totally without a purpose in life. In despair,
on 1 May 1906, he wrote Florenskii from Paris:
You found me a mere child at the University, knowing nothing. I dont know how it happened,
but I cannot be satisfied any more with the analytic functions and Taylor series. . . . To see the
misery of people, to see the torment of life . . . this is an unbearable sight. . . . I cannot live
by science alone. . . . I have nothing, no worldview, and no education.40
Through a long correspondence and in numerous meetings in a monastery town outside

Moscow (Sergeev Posad, Zagorsk), Florenskii, a devout believer, supplied Luzin with a
new worldview, one that combined religion and mathematics and, as we will see, gave the
desperate Luzin reason to believe that he could renew his mathematical research while at
the same time serving moral and religious purposes.
Florenskii thought that much of the nineteenth century had been a disaster from the
standpoint of philosophy, religion, and ethics, and he believed that the particular type of
mathematics that had dominated the century was an important cause of this misfortune.
The governing mathematical principle of the nineteenth century, which Florenskii saw as
responsible for ethical decline, was continuity, the belief that all phenomena pass
smoothly from one state to another. In place of this false principle of continuity Florenskii proposed its opposite, discontinuity, which he saw as morally and religiously superior.
who was a doctor in the hospital. Chebotaryovs son G. N. Chebotaryov wrote, On umer na maminykh rukakh
(He died in my mothers arms): G. N. Chebotaryov, Iz vospominanii ob ottse, in Nikolai Grigorevich
Chebotarev, ed. Iu. B. Ermolaev (Kazan: Izdatelstvo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 1994), pp. 5468, on p. 56.
38
S. S. Demidov and V. D. Esakov, Delo akademika N. N. Luzina v svete stalinskoi reformy sovetskoi
nauki, Istor. Matemat. Issled., 2nd Ser., 1999, 39:156170; Demidov and B. V. Levshin, eds., Delo akademika
Nikolaia Nikolaevicha Luzina (St. Peterburg: Russkii Khristianskii Gumanitarnyi Institute, 1999); A. P. Iushkevich, Delo akademika N. N. Luzina, Vestnik AN SSSR, 1989, 4:102113; Alexey Levin, Anatomy of a Public
Campaign: Academician Luzins Case in Soviet Political History, Slavic Review, 1990, 49:211252; and A. N.
Bogoliubov and N. M. Rozhenko, Opyt vnedreniia dialektiki v matematiku v kontse 20-kh-nachale 30-kh
godov, Voprosy Filosofii, 1991, 9:3243.
39
On 15 July 1908 Luzin wrote Florenskii: Two times I was very close to suicidethen I came here . . .
looking to talk with you, and both times I felt as if I had leaned on a pillar. . . . I owe my interest in life to
you. Ford, Influence of Florensky on Luzin (cit. n. 36), p. 338.
40
Perepiska N. N. Luzina s P. A. Florenskim, Istor. Matemat. Issled., 1989, 31:136.

67
Florenskii was well aware that discussions of the continuity/discontinuity antinomy were
very oldthey dated back to the Greeks and were perhaps discussed most famously in
Zenos paradoxesbut he believed that the issue had a new relevance because the nineteenth century was the unfortunate apogee of faith in continuity; indeed, he wrote that in
the nineteenth century the cementing idea of continuity brought everything together in
one gigantic monolith.41
The mathematical approach that created this monolith, Florenskii went on, was infinitesimal calculus. This method became all-powerful because Newtonian mechanics had
placed it at the heart of the physical sciences. One result of its apparent omnipotence was
that mathematicians concentrated on continuous functions, since all differentiable functions are continuous. Florenskii believed that in consequence mathematicians and philosophers tended to ignore problems that could not be analyzed by calculusthe discontinuous phenomena.
Believing that continuous functions were deterministic, Florenskii saw the expansion
of the philosophy of determinism throughout psychology, sociology, and religion as the
destructive result of a temporary emphasis in mathematics.42 Thus he held nineteenthcentury mathematics responsible for the erosion of earlier beliefs in freedom of the will,
religious autonomy, and redemption.
Florenskii also thought, however, that mathematics was destined to lead thinkers out of
the very blind alley it had created. In the 1880s Cantor, the founder of set theory, had
analyzed the continuum as merely one among all possible sets and had therefore stripped
the concept of its metaphysical, dogmatic power. (The first terms from set theory were
introduced at Moscow University in 1900/1901, the year Florenskii began his mathematical
studies there, and he quickly became aware of them.) The way was now open, Florenskii
maintained, to restore discontinuity to its rightful place in the mathematical worldview.
He called for the dawn of a new discontinuous worldview and challenged colleagues
like Luzin and Egorov to foster this new approach, one that would, he thought, combine
mathematics, religion, and philosophy.43
Although Florenskii became a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, his theological
views were unconventional. Indeed, he supported a viewpoint that was condemned by the
officials of the Church as a heresy. We must look briefly at the history of this controversy
within the Russian Orthodox Church in order to understand how it became linked to
mathematics.
In the years 19071917 the world of Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion, was shaken
by a theological struggle. A polemic developed between two groups of religious believers,
the Imiaslavtsy (Name Worshippers or Nominalists) and the Imiabortsy (AntiNominalists).44 The dispute was rooted in the ancient question as to how humans can
41
Florenskii, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, trans. Jakim (cit. n. 36), p. 160. For a philosophical discussion
of discontinuity, especially in the Russian context, see M. D. Akhundov, Problema preryvnosti i neprerynosti
prostranstva i vremeni (Moscow: Nauka, 1974). See also J. Bouveresse, Weyl, Wittgenstein, et le proble`me du
continu, in Le labyrinthe du continu, ed. J.-M. Salanskis and H. Sinaceur (Paris/Berlin: Springer, 1992).
42
P. A. Florenskii, Vvedenie k dissertatsii Ideia preryvnosti kak element mirosozertsaniia, Istor. Matemat.
Issled., 1986, 30:159176, on p. 170.
43
Ibid., p. 164. On the introduction of terms from set theory at Moscow University see F. A. Medvedev, O
kurse lektsii B. K. Mlodzeevskogo po teorii funktsii deistvitelnogo peremennogo, prochitannykh oseniu 1902
g. v Moskovskom universitete, Istor. Matemat. Issled., 1986, 30:130147; on Cantor see Joseph W. Dauben,
Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979).
44
E. S. Polshchuk, ed., Imiaslavie: Antologiia (Moscow: Faktorial, 2002). See also O. L. Solomina and A. M.
Khitrov, Zabytye stranitsy russkogo imiaslaviia: Sbornik dokumentov i publikatsii po afonskim sobytiiam 1910

68
worship an unknowable deity. If God is in principle beyond the comprehension of mortals

(and Holy Scripture contains many such assertions), how, in complete ignorance of his
nature, can human beings worship him? What does one worship? The most common
response to this dilemma throughout religious history was a resort to symbols: icons,
names, rituals, music, relics, scents, tastes, art, architecture, literature. Symbolism is the
use of a perceptible object or activity to represent to the mind something that is not shown
but realized by association with it.45
In 1907 Ilarion, a monk of the Orthodox Church who had spent years in a Russian
monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, published a book entitled In the Mountains of the
Caucasus that seized on an existing symbolic tradition in Orthodox liturgy, especially the
chanting of the Jesus Prayer (Iisusovaia molitva), and raised it to a new prominence.46
In the Jesus Prayer the religious believer chants the names of Christ and God over and
over, hundreds of times, until his whole body reaches a state of religious ecstasy in which
his breathing cycle and even the beating of his heart are supposedly attuned to the chanted
words Christ and God (a state vividly described by J. D. Salinger in Franny and
Zooey). According to Ilarion, the worshipper achieves a state of unity with God through
the rhythmic pronouncing of his name. And this demonstrates, he went on, that the name
of God is holy in itself, that the name of God is God (Imia Bozhie est sam Bog).47
1913 gg. (Moscow: Palomnik, 2001); Iu. Rasskazov, Sekrety imen: Ot imiaslavii do filosofii iazyka (Moscow:
Labirint, 2000); Ilarion, Sviashchennaia taina tserkvi: Vvedenie v istoriiu i problematiku imiaslavskikh sporov
(St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2002); Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Pt. 2, in The Collected Works of
Georges Florovsky, ed. Richard S. Haugh, trans. Robert L. Nichols (Belmont, Mass.: Buchervertriebsanstalt,
1987), Vol. 6, p. 376; Tom Dykstra, Heresy on Mt. Athos: Conflict over the Name of God among Russian
Monks and Hierarchs, 19121914 (M.A. essay, St. Vladimirs Seminary, New York, 1988); Antoine Niviere,
Les moines onomatodoxes et lintelligentsia Russe, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique, 1988, 29(2):181
194; and Scott M. Kenworthy, Church, State, and Society in Late-Imperial Russia: The Imiaslavie Controversy,
paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies National Convention, Pittsburgh, Nov. 2002. Although the debates over Name Worshipping became particularly intense in the first third
of the twentieth century, the roots of the controversy go far back in the history of Eastern Orthodoxy and can
be found in some of the writings and sayings of Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and other Church figures.
See Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology.
45
For a scriptural reference to human inability to comprehend God see, e.g., Philippians 4:7: and the peace
of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Both mathematics and religion make heavy, though very different, use of symbols. And in both the question of the autonomy
of the symbols arises. Although Florian Cajori does not directly confront this issue, see his useful A History of
Mathematical Notations (Chicago: Open Court, 1929); see also Paul D. L. Avis, God and the Creative Imagination: Metaphor, Symbol, and Myth in Religion and Theology (New York: Routledge, 1999).
46
The full name of the book was In the Mountains of the Caucasus: A Conversation between Two Elder
Ascetics Concerning the Inner Union of Our Hearts with the Lord through the Prayer of Jesus Christ; or, The
Spiritual Activity of Contemporary Hermits, Composed by the Hermit of the Caucasus Mountains, the Monk
Ilarion [Na gorakh Kavkaza, beseda dvukh startsev podvishnikov o vnutrennem edinenii s Gospodom nashikh
serdets chrez molitvu Iisus Khristova ili dukhovnaia deiatelnost soveremennykh pustinnikov, sostavil pustynnozhitel Kavkavskikh gor skhimonakh Ilarion] (1907), 3rd ed. (Kiev: Kievskaia Perchersskaia Lavra, 1912).
The roots of the Jesus Prayer go back centuries; the start of the tradition is often cited as the Apostle Pauls
instruction to the faithful to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). The tradition exists in both Catholic and
Orthodox liturgies, and there is an extensive literature on it. In Russia the Jesus Prayer acquired a special
prominence, especially after the publication of the folklore classic The Way of the Pilgrim in Kazan in 1884.
The book popularized the prayer and was translated into many languages.
47
A. F. Losev, Imiaslavie, http://www.ccel.org/contrib/ru/Other/Losev/ONOMATOD.HTM, p. 3; and Polshchuk, ed., Imiaslavie: Antologiia (cit. n. 44), p. 490. Salinger has Franny observe to her incredulous friend Lane,
Well, the starets tells him about the Jesus Prayer first of all. . . . If you keep saying that prayer over and over
againyou only have to just do it with your lips at firstthen eventually what happens, the prayer becomes
self-active. Something happens after a while. I dont know what, but something happens, and the words get
synchronized with the persons heartbeats, and then youre actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really
tremendous, mystical effect on your whole outlook. I mean thats the whole point of it, more or less. I mean you
do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everythings about. J. D.
Salinger, Franny and Zooey (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), pp. 3637.

69
At first the book was well received by many Russians interested in religious thought.
Ilarions views became very popular among the hundreds of Russian monks on Mount
Athos, and gradually its influence spread elsewhere. But the highest officials in Russian
Orthodoxy, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, soon began to consider the book not just a
description of the significance of prayer but a theological assertion. Many of them thought
the adherents of Ilarions beliefs were hereticseven pagan pantheistsbecause they
allegedly confused the symbols of God with God himself. On 18 May 1913 the Holy
Synod in St. Petersburg condemned the Name Worshippers; soon thereafter the Russian
Navy, with the approval of Tsar Nikolai II and the patriarch of Constantinople (who had
jurisdiction over the monasteries of Mount Athos), sent several gunboats to Mount Athos
to bring the rebellious monks forcibly to heel. Over six hundred unrepentant monks were
flushed out of their cells with fire hoses and brought under guard to Odessa. In later
detentions, the number grew to approximately a thousand. The dissidents strongly protested
their treatment and obtained promises of further investigation and reconsideration. The
Name Worshippers had some defenders in high places (including Florenskii, now a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy), and the tsar himself seemed to be of two
minds on the question.48
With the advent of World War I the issue receded into the background, but until the end
of the tsarist regime the adherents of the heresy were forbidden to return to Mount Athos
or to reside in major cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow. The most fervent of them
retreated to monasteries, including ones with which Florenskii was very familiar, where
they continued to practice and propagate their variant of the faith.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in October/November 1917 the Name Worshippers, now
living all over rural Russia, were more successful than most other religious believers in
continuing their practices out of view of the Soviet political authorities, who were trying
to suppress religion. Branded as heretics and excluded from the established churches, they
had already learned how to conduct their devotions in secret.49 Because they were largely
out of view they were not compromised by association with the Bolsheviks, as some of
the established Church leaders soon became. The dissidents claimed to be representatives
of the undefiled true faith, which increased their popularity with some religious opponents of the new Communist regime. (Amazingly, as late as 1983 there were still rumors
about secret followers of the dissident practice of Name Worshipping in the Soviet Union,
and some people have asserted that descendants of the sect members still practice their
faith in the Caucasus today, having outlasted their Soviet oppressors. Recent publications
in Moscow illustrate that some of the ideas of Name Worshipping remain attractive to
intellectuals.50)
48
Polshchuk, ed., Imiaslavie: Antologiia, pp. 479518. According to Vladimir Gubanov, the Holy Synod was
urging the tsar to squelch the heresy before it split the faith and the nation, but the monk Grigory Rasputin, who
was close to the court, defended the Name Worshippers. The tsar evidently hesitated but in the end gave in to
the synod. See Vladimir Gubanov, Tsar Nikolai II i novye mucheniki: Prorochestva, chudesa, otkrytiia i molitvy:
Dokumenty (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvo svt. Vasilliia Velikogo, 2000). Tom Dykstra also has written that Rasputin may have supported the Name Worshippers in Heresy on Mt. Athos (cit. n. 44).
49
Demidov, Professor Moskovskogo universiteta Dmitrii Fedorovich Egorov i imiaslavie v Rossii v pervoi
treti XX stoletiia (cit. n. 36), pp. 129130.
50
Regarding the survival of Name Worshipping see Polshchuk, ed., Imiaslavie: Antologiia (cit. n. 44), p. 513;
and Ep. Ilarion (Alfeev), Sviashchennaia taina tserkvi, Vol. 2, http://st-jhouse.narod.ru/biblio/texts.htm. On its
present interest to intellectuals see the recent essay by A. N. Parshin, well-known mathematician, pupil of Igor
Shafarevich, and corresponding member in the Department of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences:
Svet i Slovo (k filosofii imeni), in Imiaslavie: Antologiia, ed. Polschuk, pp. 529544.

70
At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Florenskii was living in a monastery town
near Moscow, and he was close to the Name Worshipper dissidents both religiously and
intellectually. He communicated their ideas to Luzin and Egorov and translated them into
mathematical parlance. In the early 1920s there was a Name Worshipper circle (imeslavcheskii kruzhok) in Moscow where the ideas of the religious dissidents and the concepts
of mathematics were brought together. Participants in the circle included fifteen or sixteen
philosophers, mathematicians, and religious thinkers. Sometimes the group met at Egorovs
apartment, and at several of these meetings Florenskii presented papers. Here he expounded
the view that the point where divine and human energy meet is the symbol, which is
greater than itself.51 Florenskii believed that both religious and mathematical symbols can
attain full autonomy.
Florenskii understood that the Name Worshippers had raised the issue of naming to
a new prominence. To name something was to give birth to a new entity. Florenskii was
convinced that mathematics was a product of the free creativity of human beings and that
it had a religious significance. Humans could exercise free will and put mathematics and
philosophy in perspective. The famous statement of Georg Cantor (cited as the epigraph
to this essay) that the essence of mathematics resides in its freedom clearly had a strong
appeal for Florenskii. Mathematicians could create beingssetsjust by naming them.
For example, defining the set of numbers such that their squares are less than 2, and naming
it A, and analogously the set of numbers such that their squares are larger than 2, and
naming it B, immediately brought into existence (essentially through the EudoxusCauchy construction) the real number 2.
Florenskii saw the development of set theory as a brilliant example of how naming and
classifying can result in mathematical breakthroughs. A set was simply an entity named
according to an arbitrary mental system, not an ontologically existing object. When a
mathematician created a set by naming it, he was giving birth to a new mathematical being.
The naming of sets was a mathematical act, just as, according to the Name Worshippers,
the naming of God was a religious one. A new form of mathematics was being born, said
Florenskii, and it would rescue mankind from the materialistic, deterministic modes of
analysis so common in the nineteenth century. And, indeed, set theory, new insights into
continuous and discontinuous phenomenalike the development, under the name arithmology, of the p-adic numbers by Kurt Hensel in 1897 (which strongly impressed Egorov,
Luzin, and Florenskii and their followers)and discontinuous functions became hallmarks
of the Moscow School of Mathematics.
The idea that naming is an act of creation has a long history in religious and mythological thought. It has been claimed that the Egyptian god Ptah created with his tongue
that which he conceived. In Genesis we are told that God said, Let there be light: and
there was light. In other words, the naming and the creation of light were simultaneous.
Names are words, and the first verse in the Gospel according to St. John states: In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. In the
Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbala (Book of Creation, Zohar) there is a belief in
creation through emanation, and the name of God is considered holy.52
Polshchuk, ed., Imiaslavie: Antologiia, p. 513; and http://st-jhouse.narod.ru/biblio/texts.htm.
For a modern translation of Memphite theology see Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Vol. 1
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1989), pp. 305312, 595602. We are grateful to John Murdoch
for this suggestion. On the Jewish mystical tradition see Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
(New York: Schocken, 1995).
51
52

71
The connection between the religious dissidents in Russia who emphasized the importance of the names of Jesus and God and the new trends in Moscow mathematics went
beyond the suggestions and implications so far discussed. There was a direct linguistic
connection as well. Luzin and Egorov were in close communication with French mathematicians with similar concerns. In 1904 Henri Lebesgue introduced the concept of named
sets, by which he meant sets that could be constructed without using Zermelos Axiom
of Choice. He spoke of naming a set (nommer un ensemble); such a set was then often
called a named set (ensemble nomme). The Russian equivalent was imennoe mnozhestvo. Thus the Russian root word imia (name) is found in the terms for both the
new type of sets and the religious practice of imiaslavie (Name Worshipping). And,
indeed, much of Luzins work on set theory involved the study of effective sets (named
sets).53 To Florenskii, this meant that religion and mathematics were moving in the same
direction.
Roger Cooke has studied Luzins personal notes in the archives in Moscow and notes
that he
frequently studied the concept of a nameable object and its relationship to the attempted
catalog of the flora and fauna of analysis found in the Baire classification. To Luzin the continuum conjecture was merely one aspect of the general problem of naming the set of countable
ordinal numbers; he seems to have believed that if one could name this set in the sense of
Lebesgue, it would not be difficult to settle the question of its cardinality. . . . Luzin was trying
very hard to name all the countable ordinals.
At one point Luzin wrote in his notes, Everything seems to be a daydream, playing with
symbols, which however, yield great things. Elsewhere he scribbled: nommer, cest avoir
individu.54
Both the French and the Russian mathematicians were wrestling with the problems of
what a mathematical object is, what is allowed, and what is a good definition of such a
mathematical object. As noted earlier, Lebesgue wrote to Borel in 1905: Peut-on sassurer
de lexistence dun etre mathematique sans le definir? (Is it possible to convince yourself
of the existence of a mathematical being without defining it?) Florenskii saw this question
as the analogue of, Is it possible to convince yourself of the existence of God without
defining him? The answer for Florenskiiand, later, for Egorov and Luzinwas that
the act of naming in itself gave the object existence. Thus naming became the key to
both religion and mathematics. The Name Worshippers gave existence to God by worshipping his name, and mathematicians gave existence to sets by naming them.
The circle of eager students that formed around Luzin at about the time of the start of
World War I and continued throughout the early 1920s was known as Lusitania. An
indirect hint of the place of religion in the concerns of the Lusitanians is given by the
description of the group by one of its original members, M. A. Lavrentev. According to
Lavrentev (later a significant mathematician and the founder of the Academic City in
Novosibirsk), the Lusitanians acknowledged two leaders: God-the-father Egorov and
53
Henri Lebesgue, Contribution a letude des correspondances de M. Zermelo, Bull. Soc. Math. France,
1907, 35:227237, esp. pp. 228, 236. Later, after the intervention of Zermelo and also Richards letter, the
adjective effective or denumerable would be used, e.g., by Borel: see Hadamard et al., Cinq lettres sur la
theorie des ensembles (cit. n. 17).
54
Roger Cooke, N. N. Luzin on the Problems of Set Theory, unpublished draft, Jan. 1990, pp. 12, 7.
Luzins notes are held in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow, fond 606, op. 1, ed.
khr. 34 (the scribble is in infelicitous but understandable French).

72
God-the-son Luzin. It was Luzin who told the young Lusitanians: Egorov is the chief
of our society and Our discoveries belong to Egorov. Students in the society were given
the monastic title of novices. Noting Lavrentevs description of the group, Esther Phillips wrote, There was clearly a strong sense of belonging to an inner circle or a secret
order.55 All the principals and novices went to Egorovs home three times a year: Easter,
Christmas, and his name-day. Among the Lusitanians there was intense camaraderie inspired by Luzin, who was described as extroverted and theatrical and who evoked real
devotion among students and colleagues. On the other hand, Egorov, the senior member,
was more reserved and formal. According to Lavrentev, Luzins chief assistants in managing Lusitania were three students, each with his own function: Pavel Aleksandrov was
the creator, Pavel Uryson the keeper, and Viacheslav Stepanov the herald of the mysteries
of Lusitania.
The Moscow School of Mathematics gave birth to a new field, the descriptive theory
of sets.56 The date of birth of this field can be given precisely: it was the day in 1917 when
one of Luzins doctoral students, Mikhail Suslin, rushed into the office of his thesis advisor
to show him a mistake he had found in a seminal article published in 1905 by the great
French mathematician Lebesgue. Fortunately, there was an eyewitness to the scene: Waclaw Sierpinski, a young Polish student of Luzins. Sierpinski later recalled, M. Lusin
treated very seriously this young student who was claiming that he had found a mistake
in the paper of such an eminent scientist.57
It took a few months for Suslin and Luzin to understand the deep structure behind this
problem. Starting from a class of sets defined by Borel for the purpose of his theory of
measure (called borelian sets), Suslin showed that this class was not stable under projection, and he then went further to create a new class of sets (A-sets or analytic sets). Suslin
and Luzin, using nondenumerable cardinals, then created a whole hierarchy of subsets of
the continuum.58
CONCLUSIONS
We believe that our study of French and Russian developments in set theory and the theory
of functions points strongly toward the importance of cultural factors in the process and
creation of mathematicsin the French case, Descartes, positivism, and Pascal; in the
Russian case, mystical religious beliefs, particularly those of the Name Worshipping movement. As a result, the French and Russians followed different approaches.
We realize that intellectual causation of the type we are describing can never be proved,
only made plausible and, we hope, persuasive. However, we think that our interpretation
has grown stronger as evidence for the rationalistic scruples of the French and the religious
mysticism of the Russians has accumulated. We further believe that a comparative study
55
M. A. Lavrentev, Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, Russian Mathematical Surveys, 1974, 29(5):173178 [Uspekhi Mathematicheskikh Nauk, 1974, 29(5):177182]; and Esther R. Phillips, Nicolai Nicolaevich Luzin and
the Moscow School of the Theory of Functions, Hist. Math., 1978, 5:275305, on p. 293.
56
Descriptive set theory was a means to analyze the complexity of subsets of real numbers using the
complexity of their description. A major aim of descriptive set theory is to describe all of the naturally occurring
sets of real numbers by using various constructions to build a strict hierarchy, beginning with simplest sets made
of open intervals of real numbers.
57
Waclaw Sierpinski, Les ensembles projectifs et analytiques (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1950), pp. 4447. For
more information on Suslin, who died tragically young, see V. I. Igoshin, A Short Biography of Mikhail
Yakovlevich Suslin, Russian Math. Surv., 1996, 51(3):371383.
58
Sierpinski, Les ensembles projectifs et analytiques.

73
of the type we present here produces more credible evidence for the influence of society
on the development of science than can an example in which only one society is being
considered. The juxtaposition of the French and Russian mathematicians working on the
same problems at the same time highlights the differences in their viewpoints. And the
Russian case is particularly interesting because it indicates that religion may have played,
at least in this instance, a positive role in the development of science.
The influence of religion in mathematics is not a new topic; it goes back at least to
Pythagoras. Hermann Weyl noted in his analysis of the Greek golden age of mathematics,
Aside from the fact that mathematics is the necessary instrument of natural science, purely
mathematical inquiry in itself, according to the conviction of many great thinkers, by its special
character, its certainty and stringency, lifts the human mind into closer proximity with the divine
than is attainable through any other medium. Mathematics is the science of the infinite, its goal
the symbolic comprehension of the infinite with human, that is finite, means. It is the great
achievement of the Greeks to have made the contrast between the finite and the infinite fruitful
for the cognition of reality. Coming from the Orient, the religious intuition of the infinite, the
apeiron, takes hold of the Greek soul. This tension between the finite and the infinite and its
conciliation now become the driving motive of Greek investigation.59
In our view, the rationalistic commitments of the French mathematicians we discuss in

this essay were an inhibiting factor in their acceptance of transfinite numbers, and the
religious interests of the Russians were a promoting factor; but we do not see this relationship as necessary or inherent. What we have presented is not an argument about the
essential relationship of religion and science but a particular interpretation of that relationship advanced for a specific time and place.
Although Luzin was very close to a number of leading French mathematicians and cited
his debt to them, his worldview was different. In their study of set theory, the French
sought to distinguish the philosophical, mathematical, and psychological components and
keep them separate. Luzin and some of his friends, on the other hand, believed that mathematics was linked to religion, but they could not be explicit about these links because of
the hostile Soviet environment after the 1917 revolution. They knew that they could get
into trouble with the authorities if the views discussed in the meetings of the imiaslavie
circle became known.60 Eventually Luzin and his friends were caught and persecuted, but
only after they had made mathematical breakthroughs. In the 1920s Luzins religious and
philosophical approach helped stimulate in him a profound mathematical originality. He
and his students created a new field: the descriptive theory of sets.
One of the leading French mathematicians in this story, Henri Lebesgue, finally acknowledged that it was, specifically, philosophywhat he and his French colleagues
had tried to avoid in mathematicsthat helped Luzin make his innovations. Lebesgue
wrote in a preface to Luzins book, published in Paris in 1930, that with Luzin mathematical exigencies and philosophical exigencies are constantly associated, one can even
Hermann Weyl, God and the Universe: The Open World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1932), p. 8.
While we know that Egorov was a leader of this circle, we have no concrete evidence that Luzin was or
that he ever attended its meetings. We do know that Luzin was a friend of Florenskii, that he was familiar with
the Name Worshipping movement, and that he put great emphasis on naming in his mathematical research.
Luzin was more cautious than Egorov and probably made more of an effort to conceal his religious views from
the Soviet authorities.
59
60

74
say fused. Lebesgue admitted that this approach helped Luzin and his students to find a
concept he had not seen. Once his eyes were opened, Lebesgue was astounded by the
fruitfulness of the Russian approach. In frank wonderment, he declared, M. Luzin examines questions from a philosophical point of view and ends up with mathematical results.
This is an originality without precedent!61
61
. . . exigences mathematiques et exigences philosophiques sont constamment associees, on peut meme
dire fondues: Henri Lebesgue, Preface, in Nicolas Lusin, Lecons sur les ensembles analytiques et leurs
applications (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1930), p. xi. M. Lusin examine les questions dun point de vue philosophique et aboutit ainsi a` des resultats mathematiques: originalite sans precedent! ibid., p. ix.


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A Comparison of Two Cultural Approaches to Mathematics: France and Russia, 18901930

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A Comparison of Two Cultural

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

These various influences warned French mathematicians against mixing psychology or

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

Through a long correspondence and in numerous meetings in a monastery town outside

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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worship an unknowable deity. If God is in principle beyond the comprehension of mortals

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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LOREN GRAHAM AND JEAN-MICHEL KANTOR

In our view, the rationalistic commitments of the French mathematicians we discuss in

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A COMPARISON OF TWO CULTURAL APPROACHES TO MATHEMATICS

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