Log24

" Indeed, about the Italian debate on foundations of Geometry, it is not rare to read comments in the same spirit of the following one, due to Jeremy Gray¹³. He is essentially reporting Hans Freudenthal’s point of view:

' When the distinguished mathematician and historian of mathematics Hans Freudenthal analysed Hilbert’s  Grundlagen he argued that the link between reality and geometry appears to be severed for the first time in Hilbert’s work. However, he discovered that Hilbert had been preceded by the Italian mathematician Gino Fano in 1892. . . .' "

¹³ J. Gray, "The Foundations of Projective Geometry in Italy," Chapter 24 (pp. 269–279) in his book Worlds Out of Nothing , Springer (2010).