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  • Book
  • Oct 2024

David Hilbert's Lectures on the Foundations of Arithmetic and Logic 1894-1917

  • The six volume collection makes available for the first time the German text of the most important of David Hilbert's unpublished lectures on the foundations of mathematics and physics, together with a scholarly commentary in English

About this book

Volume 2 focuses on notes for lectures on the foundations of the mathematical sciences held by Hilbert in the period 1894-1917. They document Hilbert’s first engagement with ‘impossibility’ proofs; his early attempts to formulate and address the problem of consistency, first dealt with in his work on geometry in the 1890s; his engagement with foundational problems raised by the work of Cantor and Dedekind; his early investigations into the relationship between arithmetic, set theory, and logic; his advocation of the use of the axiomatic method generally; his first engagement with the logical and semantical paradoxes; and the first formal attempts to develop a logical calculus. The Volume also contains Hilbert’s address from 1895 which formed the preliminary version of his famous Zahlbericht (1897).

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, USA

    William Ewald

  • McGill University Dept. Philosophy, Montreal, Canada

    Michael Hallett

  • Universität Göttingen Philosophisches Seminar, Göttingen, Germany

    Ulrich Majer

  • Carnegie Mellon University Dept. Philosophy, Pittsburgh, USA

    Wilfried Sieg

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: David Hilbert's Lectures on the Foundations of Arithmetic and Logic 1894-1917

  • Editors: William Ewald, Michael Hallett, Ulrich Majer, Wilfried Sieg

  • Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Copyright Information: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2025

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-540-20605-7Due: 22 October 2024

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Topics: History of Mathematical Sciences, Mathematical Logic and Foundations