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Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy

Chapter 3: EDITORS NOTE
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About This Book

The work offers a clear, nontechnical exposition of the foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic, aiming to make recent logical results accessible without symbolic formalism. It explains the natural numbers and the definition of number, finitude and induction, order and kinds of relations, similarity of relations, construction of rational, real, and complex numbers, infinite cardinals and ordinals, limits and continuity of series and functions, selection principles and the multiplicative axiom, the axiom of infinity and logical types, general issues in deduction, propositional functions, descriptions, and classes, and concludes with discussion of the relation between mathematics and logic.

EDITOR'S NOTE

THOSE who, relying on the distinction between Mathematical Philosophy and the Philosophy of Mathematics, think that this book is out of place in the present Library, may be referred to what the author himself says on this head in the Preface. It is not necessary to agree with what he there suggests as to the readjustment of the field of philosophy by the transference from it to mathematics of such problems as those of class, continuity, infinity, in order to perceive the bearing of the definitions and discussions that follow on the work of "traditional philosophy." If philosophers cannot consent to relegate the criticism of these categories to any of the special sciences, it is essential, at any rate, that they should know the precise meaning that the science of mathematics, in which these concepts play so large a part, assigns to them. If, on the other hand, there be mathematicians to whom these definitions and discussions seem to be an elaboration and complication of the simple, it may be well to remind them from the side of philosophy that here, as elsewhere, apparent simplicity may conceal a complexity which it is the business of somebody, whether philosopher or mathematician, or, like the author of this volume, both in one, to unravel.