Book Reviews 449

of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seeking to rewrite temporal boundaries. Within these chapters,
the interweaving of localized continuities and ruptures remind us to rely upon more natural endpoints than
dates ending in zeroes.

References

Epple, M., Kjeldsen, T. Hoff, Siegmund-Schultze, R. (Eds.), 2013. From “Mixed” to “Applied” Mathematics: Tracing
an Important Dimension of Mathematics and its History. Oberwolfach Report No 12/2013.
Klein, F., 1926. Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19 Jahrhundert. Springer, Berlin.

Jemma Lorenat
Pitzer College, United States
E-mail address: jlorenat@pitzer.edu
Available online 20 May 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2016.05.001

Infinitos, paradojas y principios. Escritos históricos en torno a los fundamentos de las matemáticas
By Alejandro R. Garciadiego. Madrid, México DF (Plaza y Valdés Editores). 2014.
ISBN 978-84-15271-88-8. 596 pp. 28 €

Alejandro Garciadiego has collected seventeen of his own papers – five of them translated into Spanish
– which he had previously published between 1984 and 2007 in this Infinites, paradoxes and principles,
producing a book that deals with the foundations of mathematics centered on Bertrand Russell’s essential
contribution. Russell’s work was the topic of Garciadiego’s Ph.D. thesis (University of Toronto, 1983) and
has been a pivotal point of his research in history of mathematics. In the present collection consisting of five
parts, the second part is devoted to historical analysis of Russell’s work, but the author aims at expanding
this experience to other fields. This broader conception includes topics such as research training in the
history of mathematics, the use of history when teaching mathematics, and the diffusion and divulgation of
mathematical ideas through historical analysis. And the plurality of purposes is manifest in the division of
the book into five parts, clearly placing it within a general framework of the history of ideas:
I. Training in history of scientific and mathematical ideas.
II. Original research on the history of foundations of mathematics.
III. History in mathematics teaching.
IV. Diffusion of mathematical ideas through historical analysis.
V. Divulgation of mathematical ideas through historical analysis.
The first part of the book is an introduction to the study of the history of ideas – especially scientific and
mathematical ideas – as explained by Garciadiego in a paper from 1996 conceived for the research training
in this field. This part deals with sources, readings, data collection, essay planning, and the craft of writing
reviews.
The second part of the book consists of six papers, five of them on Russell’s work and paradoxes in set
theory dating from 1985 to 1995, and one on the logician Philip Jourdain originally published in Spanish
in 1999.
450 Book Reviews

This section is premised on the reappraisal of the origins of the Burali-Forti paradox that Garciadiego
first undertook in 1981 resulting in a joint paper with Gregory Moore published in Historia Mathematica.
Let us recall that it was not until 1978 that the fact was pointed out that there was no paradox in any of
Burali-Forti’s papers of 1897, or in Cantor’s letters to Richard Dedekind of 1899. Since then, the founda-
tions of set theory and the role of paradoxes have been a lively topic of historical research, see for instance
Purkert (1986) and Ferreirós (2007).
In the oldest paper in the present collection, dating from 1985, Garciadiego proposed a new interpretation
of the emergence of some of the nonlogical paradoxes of the theory of sets. In his book on Bertrand
Russell and the Origins of the Set theoretic ‘Paradoxes’ (1992), which is a vivid introspection into the
emergence of philosophical concepts of eminent importance for logic and the foundations of mathematics,
Garciadiego presented a revision of the so-called standard interpretation of the origins of the set-theoretic
paradoxes. He showed that the first “paradoxes” arising from set-theory, Cesare Burali-Forti’s paradox
of the greatest ordinal and Cantor’s paradox of the greatest cardinal, were simply reductio ad absurdum
arguments in order to prove that some concepts are not valid in set theory. He also gave a plausible historical
reconstruction of the actual way in which Russell discovered the paradoxes, in May and June of 1901,
as a consequence of his attempt to reconcile some of Cantor’s results with Russell’s belief in the real
existence of the class (set) of all classes (sets), which Russell thought was contradictory. That is to say,
Russell came upon the paradoxes once he had accepted Cantor’s transfinite numbers, not as an outcome
of his criticisms. By carefully analyzing the preserved drafts of the Principles and related material from
the Bertrand Russell Archives at Hamilton (Ont.), Garciadiego again rejected some of the myths which can
be found in the literature, e.g., that it was above all Peano’s influence which forced Russell towards the
final version of the book: Garciadiego concluded that the tremendous influence of Cantor was hidden by
Russell’s own emphasis of the influence of Peano on his thinking. By analyzing the manuscript sources of
Russell’s various attempts over approximately six years to write a book on the principles of mathematics,
Garciadiego showed that Russell produced the final manuscript of the Principles in the period after meeting
Peano, i.e. from November 1900 until January 1903. He wrote it in three stages, rewriting especially Part I,
which contains the chapter on “The Contradiction” during the final stage between May 1902 and January
1903. This can be regarded as an indication that Russell finally had become convinced of the extraordinary
character of his paradox, and that this conviction was due to Frege’s reaction after having been informed
by Russell. Garciadiego illustrated the different stages of writing the Principles by printing the outlines of
tables of contents from the Russell papers.
After this selection of original papers on the history of the foundations of mathematics, Garciadiego
devotes the second half of the book to selected writings on the uses of history and historical analysis in the
teaching of mathematics and in the dissemination of mathematical ideas among different audiences.
To this end, the third part of the book presents four case studies that connect the history of mathematics
with mathematics education. The first one discusses how the history of the concept of a well-ordered set can
be illuminating in the context of undergraduate teaching. The possibilities of non-technical approaches to
mathematical knowledge are next explored in the context of Euclid’s Elements in a paper from 2007. Then
follows a discussion of the pedagogical implications of different proofs of Pythagoras’s theorem (2002).
The final essay in this section develops an intuitive approach to the concept of numerical basis that is
specifically addressed to primary education teachers.
The two final parts of the book are devoted to the dissemination of mathematical ideas through historical
analysis. The author uses the term diffusion when addressing a technically educated audience, and divul-
gation for the general public. The difference is clear when looking at the papers chosen in the diffusion
section, on Russell and the foundations of physics (1984), on the Burali-Forti paradox (2001), and on the
number one – historically, mathematically, and philosophically considered (2000). In contrast, the papers
selected in the divulgation section deal with subjects such as Russell’s emotional state when finishing The
Principles of Mathematics (1996), or the eternal question of the usefulness of mathematics (1997).
 Book Reviews 451

As a whole, Garciadiego’s selection of papers first explains how to enter the study and research of the
history of mathematical ideas, then shows his own subject of research, continues with examples of the
application of historical knowledge to mathematics teaching, and concludes with actual cases of dissem-
ination of mathematical ideas through its history among different audiences. The book ends with a sixty
pages long unified list of references, and an index of names and concepts.
The result is an attractive work, useful in promoting the study of history of mathematical ideas, not only
as a research field but also as part of education and general culture. The book seems particularly interesting
in the field of teachers’ education, a subject that emerges in this book as one of the author’s major concerns.
Furthermore, the publication in Spanish of a selection of Garciadiego’s research production throughout his
fruitful career can only be welcomed in Spanish-speaking countries. His colleagues, friends, and family will
also appreciate the kind and warm words that Alejandro uses to acknowledge their influence throughout a
life-long multifaceted intellectual journey.

References

Ferreirós, José, 2007. Labyrinth of Thought: A History of Set Theory and Its Role in Modern Mathematics, 2nd ed.
Birkhäuser, Basel etc.
Purkert, W., 1986. Georg Cantor und die Antinomien der Mengenlehre. Bull. Soc. Math. Belg., Sér. A 38, 313–327.

Elena Ausejo
Facultad de Ciencias (Matemáticas)
Universidad de Zaragoza
Ciudad Universitaria
50009 Zaragoza (Spain)
E-mail address: ichs@unizar.es
Available online 18 February 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2016.02.001