Blaschke introduced the term integral geometry to refer to an array of
interrelated identities among the integrals of certain natural
geometric quantities, the prototype being Crofton's formula for the
length of a plane curve as an integral over the space of straight
lines. In fact every compact group G acting transitively on a sphere
gives rise to such an array.
Recent developments (Alesker's theory of convex valuations) have
revealed a beautiful algebraic structure underlying this array. We
will describe this theory in general, and sketch the structure in the
particular cases of the orthogonal and unitary groups.
At the same time these ideas offer an approach to the study of
singular spaces, as the integrals involved tend to be rather
insensitive to the smoothness of the objects in question. The basic
construction is the normal cycle (also known as the characteristic
cycle), which is a Lagrangian integral current canonically associated
to a singular subspace X. In many respects this association is still
very poorly understood.