Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

Blurb

Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy is a book by Bertrand Russell, published in 1919, written in part to exposit in a less technical way the main ideas of his and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, including the theory of descriptions.
Mathematics and logic, historically speaking, have been entirely distinct studies. Mathematics has been connected with science, logic with Greek. But both have developed in modern times: logic has become more mathematical and mathematics has become more logical. The consequence is that it has now become wholly impossible to draw a line between the two; in fact, the two are one. They differ as boy and man: logic is the youth of mathematics and mathematics is the manhood of logic. This view is resented by logicians who, having spent their time in the study of classical texts, are incapable of following a piece of symbolic reasoning, and by mathematicians who have learnt a technique without troubling to inquire into its meaning or justification. Both types are now fortunately growing rarer.

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