Abstract

In his article The Foundations of Mathematics (1925) Ramsey was concerned with the nature of the statements of 'pure mathematics' and the way these statements differ from those in empirical sciences. He thought that the answer given to these questions by Hilbert and the formalist school according to which mathematical statements are meaningless formulas, is unsatisfactory for several reasons, which will not be discussed here. He also expressed serious doubts about the intuitionist program developed by Brouwer and Weyl. It is the logicist school of Frege, Russell and Whitehead, which attempted to reduce mathematics to few logical concepts, that came closest to Ramsey’s views, although he was not completely satisfied with it, either.