Hilbert’s Axiomatic Method and the Laws of Thought

Source abstract

Abstract The nature of thought was frequently appealed to in discussions of the foundations of mathematics and natural science towards the end of the nineteenth century, as were its capacities and, indeed, its laws. This very term was used, of course, by Boole as the title of the work that Russell called, with wicked humor, the first book ever written on pure mathematics (1901). Something like it also appears in the title of another well-known work, Frege’s Begriffsschrift of 1879, for recall that this is only an abbreviation for Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, (Concept writing, aformal language for pure thinking modelled on arithmetic).