Mind and Nature: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics

Introduction 1 1921 Ch 1. Electricity and Gravitation 20 1922 Ch 2. Two Letters by Einstein and Weyl on a Metaphysical Question 25 1927 Ch 3. Time Relations in the Cosmos, Proper Time, Lived Time, and Metaphysical Time 29 1932 Ch 4. The Open World: Three Lectures on the Metaphysical Implications of Science 34 1934 Ch 5. Mind and Nature 83 1946 Ch 6. Address at the Princeton Bicentennial Conference 162 ca.1949 Ch 7. Man and the Foundations of Science 175 1954 Ch 8. The Unity of Knowledge 194 1955 Ch 9. Insight and Reflection 204 Notes 223 References 241 Acknowledgments 253 Index 255

Peter Pesic is Tutor and Musician-in-Residence at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His books include "Abel's Proof: An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability and Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature".

This work edited by Pesic is an interesting collection of Hermann Weyl's essays, letters, and manuscripts. Though Weyl certainly made important contributions to mathematics and physics, this collection gives a broader picture of his work and thinking. Including many previously unpublished works and photographs, Mind and Nature presents what Weyl saw as the connections between mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. Choice Weyl's Mind and Nature: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics is of more interest to historians or to philosophers like me, but I still heartily recommend it to physicists and mathematicians. A selection of philosophical writings from the period 1921-55, it is beautifully edited with an introduction and scholarly endnotes by Peter Pesic. Mind and Nature includes several treasures... What a pleasure, what a privilege, to read and contemplate Hermann Weyl's monumental achievements. -- Jeremy Butterfield Physics Today Edited by Peter Pesic ... these works show a side of Weyl deeply concerned about the nature of infinity, knowledge, and truth... Rarely are we given insights into the thinking of great mathematicians of the past. Even more rarely are we given their thinking presented with such thought and obvious care. This book should produce a reflective response among the teachers of mathematics who read it. Mathematics Teacher [T]hese books have much to stimulate the philosopher of science today, perhaps because of, rather than in spite of the heavily idealistic leanings. More importantly, they still have much to offer the philosophically minded physicist and mathematician. -- Jeremy Gray MAA Reviews