Principia Mathematica: The First 100 Years

Abstract

In his memoir, A Mathematician’s Apology, G.H. Hardy recorded a horrible dream told him by Bertrand Russell:

He was in the top floor of the University Library, about A.D. 2100. A library assistant was going round the shelves carrying an enormous bucket, taking down book after book, glancing at them, restoring them to the shelves or dumping them into the bucket. At last he came to three large volumes which Russell could recognize as the last surviving copy of Principia Mathematica. He took down one of the volumes, turned over a few pages, seemed puzzled for a moment by the curious symbolism, closed the volume, balanced it in his hand and hesitated... . (Hardy, 1969: 83)

Principia Mathematica was certainly Russell’s longest and most sustained intellectual endeavor, representing over ten years of work on the foundations of logic and mathematics. These ten years included the initial ‘honeymoon’ period when he thought that the mathematical logic of Peano and his disciples would solve all of his difficulties, the longer period when he struggled with the paradoxes, and the final laborious time of writing out the manuscript after the adoption of the theory of types in 1907. It is not surprising that Russell should have been concerned about the fate of the work.