The Simplest Mathematics

The Simplest Mathematics is the title of a paper by Charles Sanders Peirce, intended as Chapter 3 of his unfinished magnum opus The Minute Logic. The paper is dated January–February 1902 but was not published until the appearance of his Collected Papers, Volume 4 in 1933. Peirce introduces the subject of the paper as “certain extremely simple branches of mathematics which, owing to their utility in logic, have to be treated in considerable detail, although to the mathematician they are hardly worth consideration” (CP 4.227).

References

• Peirce, Benjamin (1870), “Linear Associative Algebra”, § 1. See American Journal of Mathematics 4 (1881).

• Peirce, C.S., Bibliography.

• Peirce, C.S. (1902), “The Simplest Mathematics”, MS dated January–February 1902, intended as Chapter 3 of the Minute Logic, CP 4.227–323 in Collected Papers.

• Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP volume.paragraph.

See also

• Foundations of mathematics
• Kaina Stoicheia
• Philosophy of mathematics