Introduction to Mathematical PhilosophyRecommendations

Bertrand Russell was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic known for his "revolt against idealism" in the early twentieth century, as well as his pacifist activism during WWI, a campaign against Adolf Hitler, and later the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of analytic philosophy and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 for his humanitarian and philosophical writings, in addition to his political involvement. He produced his "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy" (1919) to explain the major ideas of his and N.A. Whitehead's previous "Principia Mathematica" in a less technical fashion. "Logic is the youth of mathematics, and mathematics is the manhood of logic," Russell says of the work, which concentrates on mathematical logic as it relates to classical and modern philosophy. It is now recognized as a clear, approachable investigation of the grey region where mathematics and philosophy collide.