Abstract

Dutch Mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (1881-1966) was a rebel. His doctoral thesis... was the manifesto of an angry young man taking on the mathematical establishment on all fronts. In a short time he established a world-wide reputation for himself; his genius and originality were acknowledged by the great mathematicians of his time... The Intuitionist-Formalist debate became a personal feud between the mathematical giants Brouwer and Hilbert, and ended in 1928 with the expulsion of Brouwer from the editorial board of the Mathematische Annalen by dictat of Hilbert. Forsaken, humiliated and disillusioned Brouwer abandoned his Intuitionist Programme and withdrew into silence just about the time when the Formalist Programme appeared to be fundamentally flawed and major opposition collapsed... This book attempts to follow the `genetic' development of Brouwer's ideas, linking the man Brouwer, his Weltanschauung, his philosophy of mathematics and his reconstruction of mathematics. Brouwer's own writings, his publications as well as his unpublished papers, are its immediate and main source of reference. It is the second volume in the new series Studies in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics, and is written for the specialist as well as for the general reader interested in mathematics and the interpretation of its status and function.