An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry

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About this book

An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry is by Bertrand A. W. Russell, and the preface says the present work is based on a dissertation submitted at the Fellowship Examination. The contents list the question What are we to do with the contradictions in space? and the statement that three contradictions will be discussed.

The contents list the antinomy of the Point as proving the relativity of space and showing that Geometry must have some reference to matter. The text says the import of Metageometry is denied by Lotze, on the ground that non-Euclidean logic is faulty, and the writer says the attack contains, if he is not mistaken, several misunderstandings due to insufficient mathematical knowledge of the subject. The book also says that, though the parts of space are intuitively distinguished, no conception is adequate to differentiate them, and that the point, or zero extension, is the spatial element.

About the author

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and social critic, and a founder of analytic philosophy. A tireless public intellectual, he wrote on everything from mathematical logic to pacifism and won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature.