Louis Couturat (January 17, 1868 - August 3, 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1868 (MDCCCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Friday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ... August 3 is the 215th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (216th in leap years), with 150 days remaining. ... 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (the word), is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... This article is 58 kilobytes or more in size. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language. ...

Life

Born in Ris-Orangis (near Paris), France, he was educated in philosophy and mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure. He held professorships, first at the University of Toulouse, then subsequently at the College de France. Ris-Orangis is a commune of the Essonne département, in France. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... This article is 58 kilobytes or more in size. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... The quadrangle at the main ENS building on rue dUlm is known as the Cour aux Ernests – the Ernests being the goldfish in the pond. ... The University of Toulouse is one of the oldest universities in Europe. ... The Coll ge de France is a higher education teaching and research establishment located in Paris, France. ...

He was the French advocate of the symbolic logic that emerged in the years before WWI, thanks to the writings of Charles Peirce, Giuseppe Peano and his school, and especially to the Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Couturat's friend and correspondent, Bertrand Russell. Like Russell and Whitehead, Couturat saw symbolic logic as a tool to advance both mathematics and the philosophy thereof. In this, he was opposed by Henri Poincare, who took considerable exception to Couturat's efforts to interest the French in symbolic logic. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Couturat was in broad agreement with the logicism of Russell and Whitehead, while Poincaré anticipated Brouwer's intuitionism. Mathematical logic is a discipline within mathematics, studying formal systems in relation to the way they encode intuitive concepts of proof and computation as part of the foundations of mathematics. ... Charles Sanders Peirce (IPA: /pɝs/), (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American polymath, physicist, and philosopher, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano (August 27, 1858 – April 20, 1932) was an Italian mathematician and philosopher best known for his contributions to set theory. ... The Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910-1913. ... Alfred North Whitehead, OM (February 15, 1861 Ramsgate, Kent, England – December 30, 1947 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) was an English-born mathematician who became a philosopher. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician and advocate for social reform. ... Henri Poincaré, photograph from the frontispiece of the 1913 edition of Last Thoughts Jules Henri Poincaré (April 29, 1854 – July 17, 1912) was one of Frances greatest mathematicians, theoretical scientists and a philosopher of science. ... Logicism is one of the schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics, putting forth the theory that mathematics is an extension of logic and therefore some or all mathematics is reducible to logic. ... Brouwer is the last name of different people. ... In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach to mathematics as the constructive mental activity of humans. ...

His first major publication was Couturat (1896). In 1901, he published La Logique de Leibniz, a detailed study of Leibniz the logician, based on his examination of the huge Leibniz Nachlass in Hannover. Even though Leibniz had died in 1716, his Nachlass was cataloged only in 1895. Only then was it possible to determine the extent of Leibniz's unpublished work on logic. In 1903, Couturat published much of that work in another large volume, his Opuscules et Fragments Inedits de Leibniz, containing many of the documents he had examined while writing La Loqique. Couturat was thus the first to appreciate that Leibniz was the greatest logician during the more than 2000 years that separate Aristotle from George Boole and Augustus De Morgan. A significant part of the 20th century Leibniz revival is grounded in Couturat's editorial and exegetical efforts. This work on Leibniz attracted Russell, also the author of a 1900 book on Leibniz, and thus began their professional correspondence and friendship. Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ... A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of the literary estate of an author who has died. ... Hanover (German: Hannover ( ) []), on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany. ... Aristotle (Greek: AristotélÄ“s) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... George Boole [], (November 2, 1815 – December 8, 1864) was a British mathematician and philosopher. ... Augustus De Morgan (June 27, 1806 – March 18, 1871) was an Indian-born British mathematician and logician. ...

In 1905, Couturat published a translation of Russell's Principles of Mathematics, with a commentary on the emerging logic and foundational mathematics of the day, and L'Algèbre de la logique, a classic introduction to the algebraic logic of George Boole, Charles Peirce, and Ernst Schroder. 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ... Algebraic logic has at least two meanings: the early study of Boolean algebra; and abstract algebraic logic, a branch of contemporary mathematical logic. ... George Boole [], (November 2, 1815 – December 8, 1864) was a British mathematician and philosopher. ... Charles Sanders Peirce (IPA: /pɝs/), (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American polymath, physicist, and philosopher, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Ernst Schröder (25 November 1841 - 16 June 1902) was the most significant representative of the algebraic logic school in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. ...

In 1907, Couturat helped found the artificial language Ido, an offshoot of Esperanto, and was Ido's principle advocate over the remainder of his life. By advocating an artificial international language, constructed along logical principles and with a vocabulary taken from existing European languages, Couturat was paralleling Peano's advocacy of Interlingua. By pushing Ido, Couturat walked in Leibniz's footsteps; Leibniz called for the creation a universal symbolic and conceptual language he named the characteristica universalis. Ido (pronounced ) is a constructed language that was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Giuseppe Peano (August 27, 1858 – April 20, 1932) was an Italian mathematician and philosopher. ... Latino sine flexione (Latin without inflections) is an auxiliary language invented by the mathematician Giuseppe Peano in 1903. ... Characteristica Universalis from Latin is commonly interpreted as Universal Character in English. ...

Ironically, this confirmed pacifist became one of the very first civilian casualties of World War I, as he was killed when his car was hit by a car carrying orders for the mobilization of the French Army. Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. ... Combatants Allied Powers: Russian Empire France British Empire Italy United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary German Empire Ottoman Empire Bulgaria Commanders Nikolay II Aleksey Brusilov Georges Clemenceau Joseph Joffre Ferdinand Foch Robert Nivelle Herbert H. Asquith D. Lloyd George Sir Douglas Haig Sir John Jellicoe Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna... The French Army (French: Armée de Terre) is the land-based component of the French Armed Forces. ...

See also

• Leibniz
• Ernst Schröder
• Ido
• Boolean algebra
• logicism

Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ... Ernst Schröder Ernst Schröder (25 November 1841 Mannheim, Germany - 16 June 1902 Karlsruhe Germany) was a German mathematician mainly known for his work on algebraic logic. ... Ido (pronounced ) is a constructed language that was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... In abstract algebra, a Boolean algebra is an algebraic structure (a collection of elements and operations on them obeying defining axioms) that captures essential properties of both set operations and logic operations. ... Logicism is one of the schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics, putting forth the theory that mathematics is an extension of logic and therefore some or all mathematics is reducible to logic. ...

References

• Primary literature:
  • 1896 De Platonicis mythis Thesim Facultati Litterarum Parisiensi proponebat Ludovicus Couturat, Scholae Normalae olim alumnus. Parisiis: Edebat Felix Alcan Bibliopola. MDCCCXCVI. 120 p.
  • 1975 (1896). De l'Infini mathématique. Georg Olms.
  • 1961 (1901). La Logique de Leibniz. Georg Olms. Donald Rutherford's English translation in progress.
  • 1966 (1903). Opuscules et Fragments Inedits de Leibniz. Georg Olms.
  • 1965 (1905). Les Principes des Mathematiques. Georg Olms.
  • 1905. L'Algèbre de la logique. Jourdain, P.E.B., trans., 1914. The Algebra of Logic. Open Court. Project Gutenberg.
• Secondary literature:
  • 1983. L'oeuvre de Louis Couturat. Presses de l'Ecole Normale Superieure. Proceedings of a conference.
  • Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940. Princeton Uni. Press. Bibliography contains 27 items by Couturat.

Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain (1879-1919) was a British logician and follower of Bertrand Russell. ... Ivor Grattan-Guinness (Born 23 June 1941, in Bakewell, England) is a prolific historian of mathematics and logic, at Middlesex University. ...

External references

• Online biography.MacTutor at St. Andrews University. Scotland.

External links

• Works by Louis Couturat at Project Gutenberg