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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Principles of Mathematics | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Mathematics | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T08:46:30.914036+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Principles of Mathematics, which I finished on 23 May 1902, turned out to be a crude and rather immature draft of the subsequent work [Principia Mathematica], from which, however, it differed in containing controversy with other philosophies of mathematics. Such self-deprecation from the author after half a century of philosophical growth is understandable. On the other hand, Jules Vuillemin wrote in 1968:
The Principles inaugurated contemporary philosophy. Other works have won and lost the title. Such is not the case with this one. It is serious, and its wealth perseveres. Furthermore, in relation to it, in a deliberate fashion or not, it locates itself again today in the eyes of all those that believe that contemporary science has modified our representation of the universe and through this representation, our relation to ourselves and to others. Moreover, in the same reflection, Russell also recounts the singular place the composition of the book had in his intellectual life. He recalls:
I finished this first draft of The Principles of Mathematics on the last day of the nineteenth century—i.e. December 31, 1900. The months since the previous July had been an intellectual honeymoon such as I have never experienced before or since. Every day I found myself understanding something that I had not understood on the previous day. I thought all difficulties were solved and all problems were at an end. When W. V. O. Quine penned his autobiography, he wrote:
Peano's symbolic notation took Russell by storm in 1900, but Russell's Principles was still in unrelieved prose. I was inspired by its profundity [in 1928] and baffled by its frequent opacity. In part it was rough going because of the cumbersomeness of ordinary language as compared with the suppleness of a notation especially devised for these intricate themes. Rereading it years later, I discovered that it had been rough going also because matters were unclear in Russell's own mind in those pioneer days. The Principles was an early expression of analytic philosophy and thus has come under close examination. Peter Hylton wrote, "The book has an air of excitement and novelty to it ... The salient characteristic of Principles is ... the way in which the technical work is integrated into metaphysical argument." Ivor Grattan-Guinness made an in-depth study of Principles. First he published Dear Russell – Dear Jourdain (1977), which included correspondence with Philip Jourdain who promulgated some of the book's ideas. Then in 2000 Grattan-Guinness published The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870 – 1940, which considered the author's circumstances, the book's composition and its shortcomings. In 2006, Philip Ehrlich challenged the validity of Russell's analysis of infinitesimals in the Leibniz tradition. A recent study documents the non-sequiturs in Russell's critique of the infinitesimals of Gottfried Leibniz and Hermann Cohen.
== See also == Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy Russellian change
== Notes ==
== References == Stefan Andersson (1994). In Quest of Certainty: Bertrand Russell's Search for Certainty in Religion and Mathematics Up to The Principles of Mathematics. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell. ISBN 91-22-01607-4.
== External links == The Principles of Mathematics – Free searchable full text versions in PDF, ePub and HTML formats The Principles of Mathematics – Online text (scan of original) on fair-use.org The Principles of Mathematics – Full text at the Internet Archive The Principles of Mathematics at PhilPapers