Labyrinth of thought. A history of set theory and its role in modern mathematics (Q1290740)

This is a very interesting book which concentrates on the early history and the ``prehistory'' of set theory. The second part of the subtitle, however, is essentially an euphemism: the role of set theory in modern mathematics is -- at most -- sketched in an extremely cursory way. The book's focus is on the development of set-theoretical ideas in 19th century German mathematics. Its first part, ``The emergence of sets within mathematics'', covers the period from approximately the 1850s to the beginning 1870s. Here the author explains quite convincingly that it was not only R. Dedekind who tended toward set-theoretical notions, e.g. in his version of ideal theory or in his (only much later published) attempts toward a definition of the reals and the integers, but that already B. Riemann's notion of ``Mannigfaltigkeit'' from 1854 should not only be understood in the (prevailing) geometrical sense: instead it belongs also to the context of a theoretical understanding of (variable) quantities and their ``domains'' of possible values. Part two, ``Entering the labyrinth -- toward abstract set theory'', essentially discusses the works of G. Cantor and R. Dedekind from the 1870s, with emphasis also on the fact that R. Dedekind had his own tendency toward a kind of logicism, i.e. toward the founding of mathematics upon the (logical!) notions of set and mapping. These two parts cover approximately \(75\%\) of the text. The third part, ``In search of an axiom system'', discusses the period from the 1890s up to the end of World War II. Main topics, discussed however much less detailed than the previous phases, are E. Zermelo's axiomatization of set theory, the influence of people like H. Weyl, J. von Neumann, Th. Skolem, A. Fraenkel, F. Ramsey for the further development, up to the roles of P. Bernays, A. Tarski and K. Gödel for the ``final'' formalization of set theory as an elementary theory which grasps the idea of the cumulative universe of sets. Only a few final remarks reflect core lines of the development in the second half of the 20th century.