Cassirer and Reichenbach on the conventionality of geometry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24225774 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Francesca Biagioli (0000-0003-1842-690X) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 120 |
| Pages | 102231 |
| Publication date | 2026-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0039-3681 • E-ISSN: 1879-2510 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102231 |
| PMID | 42868868 |
| OpenAlex | W7221653357 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 20 |
Much of the scholarship on the relativization of the a priori has taken its starting point from the way in which Reichenbach, in The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (1920), accounts for the possibility of varying the coordinating principles linking abstract mathematical structures to empirical reality. Such are the principles that Reichenbach called a priori in the sense of constitutive of the objects of experience but no longer valid for all time as Kant thought. However, this poses the problem of distinguishing the relativization of the Kantian a priori from conventionalism. This paper aims to reconsider this issue in the example of Cassirer's and Reichenbach's discussions of the status of geometry in general relativity. It will be argued that both Cassirer and Reichenbach, when his work is read against the neo-Kantian background of the debate, offer a genuine option, according to which the relativization of the Kantian a priori depends on the interrelation of different levels of constitutivity.
Ernst Cassirer · General relativity · Hans Reichenbach · Kantian a priori · Neo-Kantianism · philosophy of geometry · History and Theory of Mathematics · Kantian Philosophy and Modern Interpretations · Philosophy, Science, and History
Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie
‘…But I still can׳t get rid of a sense of artificiality’
Why Einstein did not believe that general relativity geometrizes gravity
Measurement, coordination, and the relativized a priori
Conditio sine qua non? Zuordnung in the early epistemologies of Cassirer and Schlick
An invitation to conventionalism
Relativizing the relativized a priori
Dedekind's Structuralism
The notorious man-in-the-street
What was Einstein's principle of equivalence
Between Cassirer and Kuhn. Some remarks on Friedman’s relativized a priori
Why Reichenbach wasn't entirely wrong, and Poincaré was almost right, about geometric conventionalism
Ernst Cassirer's transcendental account of mathematical reasoning
Hermann Cohen's Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode
Realism, functions, and the a priori
Ernst Cassirer and Contemporary Philosophy of Science
| Highly cited | No |
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