Whitehead & Russell - Principia Mathematica (3 Volumes)

Whitehead & Russell - Principia Mathematica (3 Volumes)

Principia Mathematica, the landmark work in formal logic written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, was first published in three volumes in 1910, 1912 and 1913. A second edition appeared in 1925 (Volume 1) and 1927 (Volumes 2 and 3). In 1962 an abbreviated issue (containing only the first 56 chapters) appeared in paperback. In 2011 a digest of the book's main definitions and theorems, originally transcribed by Russell for Rudolf Carnap, was reprinted in The Evolution of Principia Mathematica, edited by Bernard Linsky.

Written as a defense of logicism (the thesis that mathematics is in some significant sense reducible to logic), the book was instrumental in developing and popularizing modern mathematical logic. It also served as a major impetus for research in the foundations of mathematics throughout the twentieth century. Along with Aristotle's Organon and Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, it remains one of the most influential books on logic ever written.