Early Reviews
Reviews were prepared by G. E. Moore and Charles Sanders Peirce, but Moore's was never published and that of Peirce was brief and somewhat dismissive. He indicated that he thought it unoriginal, saying that the book "can hardly be called literature" and "Whoever wishes a convenient introduction to the remarkable researches into the logic of mathematics that have been made during the last sixty years will do well to take up this book." However, a long and generally favorable review was written by G. H. Hardy and appeared in Times Literary Supplement (Issue #88, 18 September 1903). Hardy titles his review "The Philosophy of Mathematics" and expects the book to appeal more to philosophers than mathematicians. But he says
- n spite of its five hundred pages the book is much too short. Many chapters dealing with important questions are compressed into five or six pages, and in some places, especially in the most avowedly controversial parts, the argument is almost too condensed to follow. And the philosopher who attempts to read the book will be especially puzzled by the constant presupposition of a whole philosophical system utterly unlike any of those usually accepted.
In 1904 another review appeared in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (11(2):74–93) written by Edwin Bidwell Wilson.He says "The delicacy of the question is such that even the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of to-day have made what seem to be substantial slips of judgement and have shown on occasions an astounding ignorance of the essence of the problem which they were discussing. ... all too frequently it has been the result of a wholly unpardonable disregard of the work already accomplished by others." Wilson recounts the developments of Peano that Russell reports, and takes the occasion to correct Henri Poincaré who had ascribed them to David Hilbert. In praise of Russell, Wilson says "Surely the present work is a monument to patience, perseverance, and thoroughness."(page 88)
Read more about this topic: The Principles Of Mathematics
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