flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Gottlob Frege (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu · 18,789 words · saved by 1 readers

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (b. 1848, d. 1925) was a German mathematician, logician, and philosopher who worked at the University of Jena. Frege essentially reconceived the discipline of logic by constructing a formal system which, in effect, constituted the first ‘predicate calculus’. In this formal system, Frege developed an analysis of quantified statements and formalized the notion of a ‘proof’ in terms that are still accepted today. Frege then demonstrated that one could use his system to resolve theoretical mathematical statements in terms of simpler logical and mathematical notions. One of the axioms that Frege later added to his system, in the attempt to derive significant parts of mathematics from logic, proved to be inconsistent. Nevertheless, his definitions (e.g., of the predecessor relation and of the concept of natural number) and methods (e.g., for deriving the axioms of number theory) constituted a significant advance. To ground his views about the relationship of lo

--> Gottlob Frege (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Menu Browse Table of Contents What's New Random Entry Chronological Archives About Editorial Information About the SEP Editorial Board How to Cite the SEP Special Characters Advanced Tools Contact Support SEP Support the SEP PDFs for SEP Friends Make a Donation SEPIA for Libraries Entry Navigation Entry Contents Bibliography Academic Tools Friends PDF Preview Author and Citation Info Back to Top Gottlob Frege First published Thu Sep 14, 1995; substantive revision Sat Jul 9, 2022 Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob

Explore this link on the map →

related reading