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Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful

110 pointsby matt_dyesterday at 11:26 PM50 commentsview on HN

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WillAdamstoday at 1:42 AM

For an accessible introduction before beginning this, consider his _Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy_:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Mathematical_P...

and for ease of reading see the various PDF versions at:

https://people.umass.edu/klement/imp/

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nitsuaeekcmtoday at 5:44 AM

For those who aren't familiar with the great but tragic story of Principia and Russell's quest for the foundation of math (spoiler: there is none), there's a really great graphic novel called Logicomix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix I haven't read it in probably ten years, but it's one of those books and stories I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about, for whatever reason.

glimshetoday at 12:32 AM

If you can read this book cover-to-cover, you're an absolute hero. Sometimes I wonder if they inserted a big logical error in the middle just to troll people under the assumption nobody would bother to read it.

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TimorousBestietoday at 3:02 AM

Instead of spending time beating one’s head against Russell and Whitehead, I would advise reading Homotopy Type Theory (aka the HoTT Book). Dependent types are cool and mind-expanding, but higher inductive types are downright mind-altering.

The Little Schemer/Typer could be used as a preparatory text to gear one up for HoTT.

It also has the advantage of being a bit more applicable to functional programming languages, maybe even more so than Mac Lane’s Categories for the Working Mathematician (which I sometimes see suggested to mathematically-inclined Haskell novices).

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voidhorsetoday at 1:42 AM

I have a copy and like it much. However, i was always partial to Frege's Begriffschrift. His notation was really creative. It's a shame Russel's deflation of that project has sentenced it to the rubbish heap of history.

makerdietytoday at 4:46 AM

So... the ancient childish attempt to prove mathematics using mathematics (Gödel's Incompleteness slew the challenger) can be used to help me be a better TypeScript programmer? I learned something new today.

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data_maantoday at 5:23 AM

It always amazes me how a random dump of someone who read the first 40 pages of PM attracts dozens comments on HN.

This really must be a very math-starved community of people who wanted to learn math but never quite could.

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