Jim Farmelant writes:
As it happens Albert Einstein who in his youth was drawn to Machian positivism in his maturity gravitated to the neo-Kantianism of Cassirer which he combined with a scientific realism. Having read a couple of Cassirer's books i know that he kept abreast of developments in modern physics including Einstein's work. That in turn raises the question of whether the two actually knew other and to what extent they may have interacted.
Jim Farmelant -------------------
That is something that never occurred to me, but it is an interesting thought. Cassirer left Germany about the same time 1933, for the same reasons. He was Jewish, an academic (civil service/academic positions were the first purge), and had enough connections and money to get out. He went to Sweden first, stayed a couple of years then went to London and arranged to have the Warburg Institute collections moved there, then to Canada. Finally, about 1940 he got into the US. I can't remember if he got a temporary position at Princeton or not. But he ended up at Yale for the last few years of his life. I read that Courant was very active in getting the math/physics crew out of Germany and into temp jobs in the US, so Cassirer could have been some later participant and may have met many of these people (Courant, von Neuman, Einstein, Goedel, etc)
Let me make a point here about groups, perception, and the physical world. When I think about group theory in relation to biology, I usually just think of crude general symmetries and the loose rules of getting from one group element to another. I mean mathematics and physics are way overdetermined in precision, proofs, formality. The world is a much looser place and I think of group-like structure arrising as rough generalizations or patterns out of much more messy phenomenon at an ordinary scale--that dimly hinted sense that the world has its 'ways'. But that isn't to say there are not quite precise forms--crystallography, snow flakes, diatoms for example.
Chuck Grimes