Prof. Dana Scott - Geometry Without Points

Professor Dana Scott, Carnegie Mellon University, presents his Distinguished Lecture entitled “Geometry Without Points“. Ever since the compilers of Euclid’s Elements gave the “definitions“ that “a point is that which has no part“ and “a line is breadth-less length“, philosophers and mathematicians have worried that the basic concepts of geometry are too abstract and too idealized. In the 20th century writers such as Husserl, Lesniewski, Whitehead, Tarski, Blumenthal, and von Neumann have proposed “point