Henrique Jales Ribeiro: University of Coimbra
 

This paper is the first known commentary on the relationship between Russell and Hertz, and, in particular, on Russell’s reading of Hertz's celebrated book The

Principles of Mechanics in The Principles of Mathematics. Some important philosophical connections of Hertz’s book, like its influence on Wittgenstein’s

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, have already been attentively studied, but, surprisingly enough, the impact of that book upon Russell’s logicism is generally

ignored in contemporary historiography. The fact that Russell concludes his book with an interpretation of Hertz’s mechanics, showing how the logicist principles of

mathematics can also be viewed as principles of mechanics, shows the indisputable relevance of that impact, and points out, in general, to an interesting

historical and philosophical connection, studied in this paper, between the work on the foundations of logic and mathematics, such as Russell’s one at the beginning

of the last century, and the work on the foundations of physics.