Principia Mathematica

Summary

Principia Mathematica is one of the seminal works of mathematical logic. Russell

coauthored it with the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead over a ten-year period
beginning in 1903. Originally conceived as an elaboration of Russell’s earlier Principles
of Mathematics, the Principia’s three volumes eventually grew to eclipse Principles in
scope and depth.

The goal of the Principia is to defend the logicist thesis that mathematics can be reduced
to logic. Russell believed that logical knowledge enjoys a privileged status in comparison
with other types of knowledge about the world. If we could know that mathematics is
derived purely from logic, we could be more certain that mathematics was true. Russell
and other philosophers believed that logical truths are special for several reasons. First,
they have the distinguishing characteristic that they are true in virtue of their form rather
than their content. Second, we have knowledge of them a priori, meaning without
experience. Take, for example, the statement “Penguins either do or do not live in
Antarctica.” This is a logical truth, an example of what logicians call the Law of
Excluded Middle. Regardless of whether we know anything about penguins or frogs or
X, we can say with certainty that this statement is true. On the other hand, we cannot
know whether penguins are good swimmers without having observed some penguins (or
at least looking in a book). Logicians, beginning with Aristotle, have studied statements
and arguments that have the quality of certainty and tried to distill what in their form
makes them certain. The Principia is in some sense an extension of this project from
general logical arguments to mathematical ones. It aims to show that mathematical truths
like “two plus two equals four” are true for the same reasons as our first statement about
penguins.
The Principia’s three massive volumes are divided into six sections. Like most modern
logic texts, the Principia begins by laying out a formal system of propositional logic and
then proceeds to develop the theorems (or consequences) of the system. The basic idea is
to use symbols to stand for propositions. A proposition is a statement that can be deemed
either true or false. For example, P could stand for the proposition that penguins live in
Antarctica and ¬ P (read “not P”) for the proposition that penguins do not live in
Antarctica. Russell and Whitehead introduce symbols like these and then add rules for
combining them into complex statements using logical connectors, the English language
equivalents of which are and, or, not, and if . . . then. Our original penguin statement
would then read “P or ¬ P.” In addition to this vocabulary for formalizing propositions,
there is also a set of rules for making deductions. A deduction is simply a way to express
a valid argument using symbols. (Recall that an argument is valid if the truth of its
premises or assumptions guarantees the truth of its conclusion.) A simple deduction rule
used in Principia is called modus ponens. It goes:

If P, then Q.
P.
Therefore Q.

As in the penguin example, P and Q can stand for any propositions, so the following is a
valid use of modus ponens:

If it rains, then the ground will be wet.

It has rained.
Therefore the ground is wet.

Typically, a formal system also contains a set of axioms or assumptions that form the
starting point for applying deduction rules. In the case of Principia, the axioms are a
select group of self-evident logical truths of the penguin type, except that they are about
classes and sets instead of concrete physical objects.

After specifying these axioms and rules, Russell and Whitehead spend the bulk of
Principia methodically developing their consequences. First, they develop their theory of
types within the formal language. Next, they define the concept of number. Defining the
concept of number is quite difficult to do without being circular. For example, it is hard to
imagine how one would explain what the number 2 is without having to refer to the
concept of 2. The key insight into this problem, which was originally conceived by the
German philosopher Gottlob Frege and adopted by Russell and Whitehead, is to think of
numbers in terms of concrete counting, not in terms of abstract numbers. When we first
learn to count, we use our fingers to mark off the items as we count them. Each finger
corresponds to one item. One can do the same thing to see if two sets are the same size by
marking off items two at a time, one from each set. If there are no items left over in either
set after pairing everything, the sets are the same size. The technical expression of this
operation is somewhat complicated, but the basic idea is that the “number” of a set is the
set of all sets that are the same size, as measured by our counting procedure. Russell and
Whitehead were able to prove that this procedure produces objects that behave just like
numbers. In fact, Russell and Whitehead go even further and make the claim that
numbers simply are these sets. The number 2 is a shorthand way of referring to “the set of
all sets of couples,” the number 3 is a shorthand for “the set of all sets of trios,” and so
on.
With the definition of number settled, Russell and Whitehead spend the rest of Principia
deriving more complicated math, including arithmetic and number theory. However, to do
this, Russell and Whitehead were forced to add two additional axioms to their system.
The first is the axiom of infinity, which postulates that there is an infinity of numbers.
This axion is necessary to derive real numbers. The second is the axiom of reducibility,
which is necessary to avoid Russell’s paradox. Using these two new axioms in
combination with the original logical axioms and modus ponens, Russell and Whitehead
spend the second and third volumes of Principia deriving much of pure mathematics in
their system of formal logic.

Analysis

Russell and Whitehead’s Principia, like Newton’s similarly titled book two centuries
earlier, was truly groundbreaking. Just as Newton’s Principia revolutionized physics,
Russell and Whitehead’s treatise forever changed mathematics and philosophy. The
Principia has produced at least three lasting, important effects. First, the Principia
brought mathematical logic to the forefront as a philosophical discipline. It inspired much
follow-up work in logic and led directly to the development of metalogic, or the study of
what properties different logical systems have. Obscure as this may sound, many, if not
most, of the interesting results in logic in the twentieth century are actually in metalogic,
and these results have had profound implications for epistemology and metaphysics.
Second, the methods of mathematical logic have had a great effect on the practice of
analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy refers to a method of doing philosophy by
making arguments, the assumptions and structure of which are as explicit and clear as
possible. This idea is directly parallel to the use of axioms and inference rules in formal
systems. From metaphysics to the philosophy of science to ethics, modern philosophers
in the Anglo-American tradition try to justify each step of their arguments by some clear
assumption or principle. Third, both the technical apparatus of mathematical logic and its
principles of rigorous, step-by-step reasoning have found application in fields ranging
from computer science to psychology to linguistics. Computer scientists, for example,
have used logic to prove the limits of what computers can do, and linguists have used it to
model the structure of natural language. None of these advances would have been
possible without Russell and Whitehead’s pioneering work.

However, the modern Principia also resembles Newton’s work in a less flattering respect.
Just as Einstein’s theory of relativity overthrew Newton’s ideas about force, mass, and
energy, the work of later logicians and philosophers such as Kurt Gödel and W. V. O.
Quine has cast the results of Principia and the logicist project into doubt. Recall that the
aim of Principia was to show that all mathematical knowledge could be derived from
purely logical principles. It was with this goal in mind that Russell and Whitehead
carefully selected logical axioms and rules of inference that appeared to be a priori
logical truths. However, two of these axioms—the axiom of infinity and the axiom of
reducibility—arguably do not fit the bill. Consider our statement about penguins: there
either are or are not penguins in Antarctica. This statement seems impossible to deny.
Now consider the assertion that there is an infinity of numbers. What makes this logically
necessary? Is there an infinite number of atoms? How can we have any knowledge of
infinites? Some critics have argued that the axiom of infinity is not a priori in nature but
is an empirical question whose answer depends on experience. If this is so, any
mathematical results derived from it must also depend on experience, and the logicist
program is in peril. Critics have also focused on the axiom of reducibility. This axiom is
necessary to avoid Russell’s Paradox, but apart from that it does not seem to have a
purely logical justification. Critics have assailed it as ad hoc, or assumed just to get a
desired result. If this is the case and it does not have a more fundamental nature, all of the
results derived from it are in doubt or at least not logically self-evident, as Russell and
Whitehead hoped to show.

The work of the logician Kurt Gödel has raised special doubts about the Principia’s
supposed proof of the logicist program. Recall that one goal of the Principia was to show
that all of mathematics could be captured in a formal system. This should be
distinguished from the central logicist thesis that mathematics was reducible to logic, but
it was still crucial to Russell and Whitehead’s method of proving this thesis. Gödel, in a
famous 1931 response to the Principia, showed that this goal was unachievable, that no
formal system could capture all mathematical truths. This famous result is known as
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Its significance was in establishing that there are some
mathematical truths that cannot be deduced in any formal system. This proved a major
obstacle to logicists like Russell who hoped to show formally that mathematics was just
logic. However, the logicist program is not yet completely dead, and the substantial
contributions of the Principia are still being felt throughout math, philosophy, and
beyond.