Justus and Hermann Grassmann: philosophy and mathematics

Abstract

During the eighteenth century in particular the empirical sciences grew enormously. Increasing breadth, complexity and unclearness of human experience brought an end to the “Classical Age” (Foucault) and its traditional forms of classification and representation. “More than ever before, the sciences were faced with the inevitability of experience in the eighteenth century. Even though quantitative extensions of knowledge had always led to changes in scientific methods, techniques and theories, this increase in knowledge accelerated to such a degree that the capacity of the traditional information processing technologies, based on the spatial organization of the stock of knowledge, seemed exhausted.” [Lepenies 1978, 16 f].