problems and concepts of scientific theory. Of the hypotheses in the narrower sense and of the value of direct empirical control, he has also spoken with the authority and the originality which belong to his position. And in dealing with the foundations of mathematics he has raised one or two questions of great philosophical import into which I have no time, even if I had the right, to enter here. In particular, in speaking of the essence of mathematical reasoning, and of the difficult problem of what makes possible novel results in the field of pure mathematics, M. Poincaré defends a thesis regarding the office of ‘demonstration by recurrence’—a thesis which is indeed disputable, which has been disputed and which I myself should be disposed, so far as I at present understand the matter, to modify in some respects, even in accepting the spirit of our author’s assertion. Yet there can be no doubt of the importance of this thesis, and of the fact that it defines a characteristic that is indeed fundamental in a wide range of mathematical research. The philosophical problems that lie at the basis of recurrent proofs and processes are, as I have elsewhere argued, of the most fundamental importance.
These, then, are a few hints relating to the significance of our author’s discussion, and a few reasons for hoping that our own students will profit by the reading of the book as those of other nations have already done.
Of the person and of the life-work of our author a few words are here, in conclusion, still in place, addressed, not to the students of his own science, to whom his position is well known, but to the general reader who may seek guidance in these pages.
Jules Henri Poincaré was born at Nancy, in 1854, the son of a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Nancy. He studied at the École Polytechnique and at the École des Mines, and later received his doctorate in mathematics in 1879. In 1883 he began courses of instruction in mathematics at the École Polytechnique; in 1886 received a professorship of mathematical physics in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris; then became member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, in 1887, and devoted his life to instruction and investigation in the regions of pure mathematics, of mathematical physics and of celestial mechanics. His list of published treatises relating to
