Geometry and experience: Einstein’s 1921 paper and Hilbert’s axiomatic system.

In his 1921 paper Geometrie und Erfahrung, Einstein decribes the new epistemological status of geometry, divorced from any intuitive or a priori content. He calls that “axiomatics”, following Hilbert’s theoretical developments on axiomatic systems, which started with the stimulus given by a talk by Hermann Wiener in 1891 and progressed until the Foundations of geometry in 1899. Difficult questions arise: how is a theoretical system related to an intuitive empirical content? © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]