WHITEHEAD, Alfred North, & Bertrand Russell.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Principia Mathematica. Second edition, first impression, of the landmark work of mathematical philosophy, incorporating a new introduction and three new appendices by Russell with the assistance of Frank Ramsey. This edition was printed in a run of 1,000 copies.In the Principia, Whitehead and Russell attempted to construct "the whole body of mathematical doctrine by logical deduction from the basis of a small number of primitive ideas and a small number of primitive principles of logical inference" (DSB, XII, p. 14). This 'logicist' position holds that mathematics is as a branch of logic, and thus "that a separate philosophy of mathematics does not exist, a view contradicting the Kantian doctrine that mathematical proofs depend on a priori forms of intuition... the three colossal volumes of Principia Mathematica... formed the greatest single contribution to symbolic logic for the time" (ODNB). Russell wrote to Helen Flexner that he doubted anyone would read it all the way through, and it is renowned for its extraordinary complexity and impenetrability, yet nonetheless, it has been correctly called "one of the most impressive intellectual monuments of the twentieth century" (ibid.).

• Printing: first

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