Principia Mathematica facts for kids
The Principia Mathematica is a very important set of three books about the basic ideas of mathematics. It was written by two famous thinkers, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. The books came out in 1910, 1912, and 1913. A second edition was published in 1927. People often call it PM for short.
The main goal of PM was to show that all mathematical truths could be proven. The authors wanted to start with a few basic rules, called axioms, and ways to figure things out, called inference rules. They used a special kind of writing called symbolic logic. They believed that every math fact could be shown to be true using these rules.
This was a huge and difficult project. It is very important in the history of mathematics and philosophy. However, in 1931, a mathematician named Kurt Gödel showed something surprising. His "incompleteness theorem" proved that PM, or any other similar system, could never reach its full goal. Gödel showed that any system of rules for math would either have problems (be inconsistent) or there would always be some true math facts that could not be proven using those rules.
One of the main reasons Whitehead and Russell wrote PM was because of earlier work. They were inspired by Gottlob Frege, another logician who worked on similar ideas.
It's important not to mix up PM with another book by Bertrand Russell. His 1903 book was called Principles of Mathematics. The authors of PM said that their new work was first planned to be a second volume of Russell's earlier book. But they soon realized the topic was much bigger than they first thought.
The Modern Library, a group that lists important books, placed Principia Mathematica as the 23rd best English-language nonfiction book of the twentieth century.
See also
In Spanish: Principia Mathematica for kids
