unreadable jargon=drenched masturbatory circle jerk. who do these guys think they are making up words ; and then there's the target audience, a bunch of snobbish pocket=protector wearing "geniuses". I'm calling emperor's new clothes on this one!!
____________________ Where CNP C. steps boldly onto the scene
Rhubarb, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb: rhubarb rhubarb [fruit or vegetable?]
Despite its title, this is NOT a math book, at least in the conventional definition of the term. [read : "conventional definition"]
...and underlining the mistakes. [in red or blue?]
...they took about 50 pages to prove that 1+1=2 [so you know now better the meaning of 'prove'?]
Read "On Denoting" [Will do! thanks!]
Sir Isaac Newton was undoubtedly one of the geniuses of our universe!! [Simon says :: The state of cataloguing and reviewing of this masterpiece on GR is pitiful! which is a true statement]
Bertrand Russell has always given me a bit of a headache. [hunh.]
Russell and Whitehead were responding to a challenge to run through all of mathematics using the same notation - something that people assumed could be done, but no one had the time to do it. Principia Mathematica ballooned into a book that is too large and dense for anyone to actually read. Worse than that, Goedel came along a few years later and proved that the book was also too short to actually accomplish what it set out to do. You're probably better off reading Russel's "Principals of Mathematics" if you're looking to understand the foundations of mathematics.
This edition is only the first 56 chapters, that Cambridge University Press is trying to sell as an introduction to logic. It wasn't written in an accessible style to be that, and it uses its own peculiar notation to boot. You should find a book on set theory or introductory logic if that's what you're looking for.
It's probably the most accessible way to read it, and not as difficult as one might think.
I once bought a huge stack of used Dover books cheap, and the guy tried to sell me the Principia Mathematica along with it... it was slightly faint with the typesetting, but for 40% off i decided sure i'll take the 3 volume monster home
I bought Principia Mathematical to *56 the same day with it...
I would probably recommend Morris Kline - Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (Oxford 1980) as the best book on Mathematical Philosophy around to go with Principia to *56
Some disagree with Kline, but i think it was one of his finest books
"It is to be regretted that this first comprehensive and thorough-going presentation of a mathematical logic and the derivation of mathematics from it [is?] so greatly lacking in formal precision in the foundations (contained in *1–*21 of Principia) that it presents in this respect a considerable step backwards as compared with Frege. What is missing, above all, is a precise statement of the syntax of the formalism."
Das Buch von Whitehead und Russell beschreibt wichtige logische Gesichtspunkte, die auch in der Philosophie eine große Rolle spielen. Ein ganz wichtiger zentraler Punkt des Buches ist das sogenannte Zirkelfehlerprinzip. Es hilft Paradoxien zu vermeiden, z.B. die 'Universalmenge' oder das 'Argument vom dritten Menschen', da es sogenannte 'illegetime Gesamtheiten' enttarnt.
That's "read" in the loosest sense of the word. I looked at many if not most of the pages here, even after I lost all sense of what the notations meant. Upshot is, if you're looking for someone to explain why 1 + 1 = 2, I'm afraid I'm (still) not your guy.