In the canon
The Principia Mathematica
Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell
- Form
- Form Philosophy
- Year
- Year 1910
- Pages
- Pages 1996
Deep in the first volume, after hundreds of pages of symbols, Whitehead and Russell arrive at a proposition from which, they observe, it will follow that 1 + 1 = 2. When the proof itself lands in the second volume it carries a note in the driest voice in philosophy: "The above proposition is occasionally useful." Everything is in that joke.
From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1 + 1 = 2.
The blurb, the gist, the why of the day and the work itself are in the app. The first button needs it on this device; the second gets it there.