This book presents William Clifford's English translation of Bernhard Riemann's seminal text, accompanied by detailed mathematical, historical, and philosophical commentary. It explores Riemann's revolutionary ideas on space, placing them within the broader framework developed by later thinkers such as Helmholtz, Ricci, Weyl, and Einstein. A historical introduction situates Riemann's work in its 19th-century context, while subsequent chapters trace the evolution of the concept of space across philosophy, physics, and mathematics, and examine its enduring influence up to modern research.

The second edition includes expanded mathematical commentary, a new section on metric geometry and machine learning, a systematic bibliography, and numerous updates throughout.

Appealing to mathematicians, historians, and readers with an interest in physics or philosophy, this book provides a comprehensive perspective on Riemann's groundbreaking contributions and their lasting impact.

Presents an English translation of Riemann's classic text accompanied by an expert commentary Connects modern research with Riemann's text Includes new section on metric geometry and machine learning among other enrichments

Autorentext

Parvaneh Joharinad received her PhD in mathematics from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran in March 2013. She worked as an assistant professor in the geometry group at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS) in Zanjan, Iran, for seven years. She is interested in the use of geometry in data science and machine learning, and in particular in dimensionality reduction, a fundamental problem in topological and geometric data analysis. Her collaboration with Jürgen Jost began in 2017, via a project on a generalization of the concept of sectional curvature to datasets. In 2020, she received a grant from the Max-Planck society to continue her collaboration at the Max-Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. As of August 2022, she started a new position at the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, as a senior postdoc. Jürgen Jost worked as a Professor of Mathematics at Ruhr University Bochum from 1984 to 1996 and since 1996 has been director and a permanent member of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig. In 1998 he became an Honorary Professor at the University of Leipzig. He is also an external member of the Santa Fe Institute for the Sciences of Complexity, New Mexico. He pursues both topical research in different fields of pure mathematics and theoretical physics (Riemannian and algebraic geometry, geometric analysis, calculus of variations, partial differential equations, dynamical systems, graph and hypergraph theory) and interdisciplinary research in complex systems, including evolutionary and theoretical molecular biology, mathematical and theoretical neuroscience, nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics, economics and social sciences, strategy science, history and philosophy of science. He directs a group of about 40 scientists, postdocs and PhD students, and has manyinternational cooperation partners.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Historical background.- Riemann's habilitation.- Presentation of the texts.- Reception and impact on history.- Modern research.- Bibliography.