I am looking for a book detailing the early history of mathematical
logic up to and including Goedel's early work. Does anyone have any
recommendations? (Especially for books still in print.)
You don't say whether you mean to include or exclude the algebraic logicians
from Boole and De Morgan to Peirce and Schroder in your conception of
mathematical logic or whether you mean to start with Frege. Van Heijenoort's
source book is rather selective, and virtually ignores the algebraic tradition
from Boole to Schroder. N. I. Styazhkin's History of Mathematical Logic from
Leibniz to Peano (Cambridge, MA/London, MIT Press, 1969) is rather uneven,
devoting an entire chapter to Boole, but an entire chapter to Boole's
successors, from Jevons and Schroder to Frege and to Peano and the Peano
school. It is strong, however, on Russian algebraic logicians working in the
Boole-Schroder calculus. In order to understand the "Booleans", it would be
worthwhile taking a look at others as well,such as Whately, Bentham, Solly --
not to mention Leibniz and the Leibnizians. While William & Martha Kneale's
classic text The Development of Logic is open to criticism (for example, it
glosses over the algebraic logicians, but doesn't ignore them -- William
Kneale wrote a few journal articles on Boole), goes rather extensively into
the Latin medievals but ignores the Byzantine Greek logicians, and by some
interpretations overemphasizes the importance Frege at the expense of Peirce
and Schroder), it was reissued just a few years ago, and is probably, at least
by default, one of the best, if not THE best, general histories of logic
currently available in English (and it was always on the reading lists that
van Heijenoort used to prepare for the logic comps).
Irving H. Anellis
MLP Book Publishers
MLP : = : Mathematics, Logic, Philosophy [and Their History]