Francesca Biagioli

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) is one of the leading figures of twentieth-century philosophy, and the founder of the philosophy of symbolic forms. This is the study of human culture, its symbolic activities, and its constructions, including mathematics, natural sciences, history, and art. Owing to his philosophical project, Cassirer explores possible connections between different disciplines or even cultures. In particular, one of the goals of Cassirer’s approach is to bridge the gap between natural sciences and the humanities (i.e., C. P. Snow’s famous “two cultures”), which partly caused the divide between analytic and continental traditions in contemporary philosophy.
My purpose is to show that Cassirer’s philosophy of mathematics plays an important role in the development of his thought, both because he first studies the use of symbols and symbolic forms in connection with mathematical researches, and because his insights into the history and philosophy of mathematics offer a starting point for his treatment of specific issues in the philosophy of science.