Skip to main content
Book cover

Logicism, Intuitionism, and Formalism

What Has Become of Them?

  • Book
  • © 2009

Overview

  • Contains essays by world-leading experts in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics, describing current developments in the foundations of mathematics in a historical perspective
  • Analyses the classical philosophical and foundational views of Frege, Brouwer, Hilbert, Gödel and Tarski and examines their relevance for current developments
  • Provides an in-depth analysis of various kinds of neologicist philosophies of mathematics
  • Contains a comprehensive section on mathematical intuitionism and constructive mathematics
  • Offers extensive discussions, by several authors, of the proof-theoretic programme of Hilbert and Bernays

Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 341)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

eBook USD 229.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 299.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 299.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (20 chapters)

  1. Introduction: The Three Foundational Programmes

  2. Logicism and Neo-Logicism

  3. Intuitionism and Constructive Mathematics

  4. Formalism

Keywords

About this book

The period in the foundations of mathematics that started in 1879 with the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift and ended in 1931 with Gödel's Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I can reasonably be called the classical period. It saw the development of three major foundational programmes: the logicism of Frege, Russell and Whitehead, the intuitionism of Brouwer, and Hilbert's formalist and proof-theoretic programme. In this period, there were also lively exchanges between the various schools culminating in the famous Hilbert-Brouwer controversy in the 1920s.

The purpose of this anthology is to review the programmes in the foundations of mathematics from the classical period and to assess their possible relevance for contemporary philosophy of mathematics. What can we say, in retrospect, about the various foundational programmes of the classical period and the disputes that took place between them? To what extent do the classical programmes of logicism, intuitionism and formalism represent options that are still alive today? These questions are addressed in this volume by leading mathematical logicians and philosophers of mathematics.

The volume will be of interest primarily to researchers and graduate students of philosophy, logic, mathematics and theoretical computer science. The material will be accessible to specialists in these areas and to advanced graduate students in the respective fields.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Dept. Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden

    Sten Lindström

  • Department of Mathematics, Uppsala University, 751 06 Uppsala, Sweden

    Erik Palmgren, Viggo Stoltenberg-Hansen

  • Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, 751 26 Uppsala, Sweden

    Krister Segerberg

About the editors

Sten Lindström is Professor of Philosophy at Umeå University and has been a Research Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS). He has published papers on intensional logic, belief revision and philosophy of language, and co-edited the books Logic, Action and Cognition: Essays in Philosophical Logic (Kluwer, 1997) and Collected Papers of Stig Kanger with Essays on his Life and Work, I-II (Kluwer, 2001).

Erik Palmgren is Professor of Mathematics at Uppsala University. His research interests are mainly mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. He is presently working on the foundational programme of replacing impredicative constructions by inductive constructions in mathematics, with special emphasis on point-free topology and topos theory.

Krister Segerberg is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Uppsala University and the University of Auckland. He is the author of papers in modal logic, the logic of action, belief revision and deontic logic, as well as the books An Essay in Classical Modal Logic (1971) and Classical Propositional Operators: An Exercise in the Foundations of Logic (1982).

Viggo Stoltenberg-Hansen is professor of Mathematical Logic at Uppsala University. His main interests include computability and constructivity in mathematics.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us