The Foundations of Arithmetic

Book excerpt: A philosophical discussion of the concept of number In the book, The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number, Gottlob Frege explains the central notions of his philosophy and analyzes the perspectives of predecessors and contemporaries. The book is the first philosophically relevant discussion of the concept of number in Western civilization. The work went on to significantly influence philosophy and mathematics. Frege was a German mathematician and philosopher who published the text in 1884, which seeks to define the concept of a number. It was later translated into English. This is the revised second edition.