“THE GREATEST SINGLE CONTRIBUTION TO LOGIC THAT HAS APPEARED IN THE TWO THOUSAND YEARS SINCE ARISTOTLE”

RUSSELL, Bertrand. Principia Mathematica. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1910-13. Three volumes. Octavo, original blue cloth. $4200.

Second edition of Russell and Whitehead’s classic study of logic and mathematics.

In 1900, Whitehead went to Paris with his star student, Bertrand Russell, and there they learned Peano's new ideography for symbolic logic and saw in it a way to reduce mathematics to its very foundations in philosophical logic. "In this monumental study of logic and set theory [the Principia Mathematica], Russell and Whitehead took up the task… of proving the logical basis of all mathematics by deducing the whole body of mathematical doctrine from a small number of primitive ideas and principles of logical inference. To do so, Russell and Whitehead devised a complex but precise system of symbols that enabled them to sidestep the ambiguities of ordinary language, and to give an exposition of sentential logic that has hardly been improved upon since" (Norman 1868). "The greatest single contribution to logic that has appeared in the two thousand years since Aristotle" (DNB). First published in 1910-13; the print run for the first volume was 750 copies, but due to slow sales this number was reduced to only 500 for the second and third volumes. Complete sets of first editions, therefore, have become notoriously scarce; John Slater, in his introduction to Bertrand Russell (ABMR, January 1988), notes that fewer than 50 copies now survive in private hands. Ex-Library with inkstamps to verso of title pages and occasional library rubber stamps, faint evidence of pocket removal to endpapers.

Interior very clean, a few inner hinges expertly reinforced, cloth with light wear to spine extremities and corners, mild rubbing to boards. A very good copy.