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Colloquium - "William Kingdon Clifford’s evolutionary approach to mathematics and his posthumous reputation, 1860-1880"

Dates
Tuesday, November 15, 2022 - 14:00 to 15:00

Speaker: Sylvia Nickerson (University of Toronto)

Abstract. What drives the mathematician to pursue their subject area of interest? How does their self-concept, personal identity and metaphysical belief shape this research, if at all? This talk explores these questions in the lives, works and philosophies of nineteenth-century mathematician William Kingdon Clifford and his novelist wife Lucy Clifford.  

In the history of philosophy, William is remembered for writing the strident essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” in which he opposed organized religion in any form. In mathematics Clifford was an early advocate of non-Euclidean geometry and quaternion algebra. In the realm of physics, he predicted curved space could cause observed physical forces. It will be demonstrated how William’s commitment to the theory of evolution and to scientific naturalism motivated all aspects of his intellectual life from his arguments against religion to his revisioning of individual and social morality as well providing an ethic he applied to his mathematical research.  

Clifford “had some wild ideas” as his widow, Lucy, put it. The concluding part of this talk examines Lucy’s role in securing William’s posthumous reputation as a brilliant man with prescient ideas who died too soon.