Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful

glimshe

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.

WillAdams

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/

voidhorse

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.

TimorousBestie

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).

makerdiety

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.

data_maan

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.

nitsuaeekcm

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.