Origins and Varieties of Logicism

This book offers a plurality of perspectives on the historical origins of logicism and on contemporary developments of logicist insights in philosophy of mathematics. It uniquely provides up-to-date research and novel interpretations on a variety of intertwined themes and historical figures related to different versions of logicism. The essays, written by established and up-and-coming scholars, are divided into three thematic sections. The first section focuses on major authors like Frege, Russell, and Carnap, providing a historical and theoretical exploration of such figures in the philosophical and mathematical milieu in which logicist views were first expounded. Section II sheds new light on the interconnections between these founding figures and a number of influential other traditions, represented by authors like Bolzano, Dedekind, Husserl, Peano, Hilbert, Goedel, and Wittgenstein. Finally, the third section assesses the legacy of such authors and of logicist themes for contemporary philosophy of mathematics, offering new perspectives on highly debated topics-neo-Logicism, set-theory, abstractionism, the relation between cardinal and ordinal conceptions of numbers, and mathematical cognition-which define the prospects of logicism in the years to come. This book represents a comprehensive account of the development of logicism and its contemporary relevance. It will be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, and the history of analytic philosophy--