[ogogmad]

> the Russell-Whitehead project of reducing mathematics to pure logic is generally considered a failure

sigh I find these discussions tedious, but oh well...

I've heard this before and it seems wrong and rooted in a misunderstanding. Can someone (not necessarily the person I'm replying to) explain why you believe this?

[thwayunion]

AFAICT among non-academics it's mostly rooted in pop sci story telling. Same genre as “Godel went insane because of his impossibility result” and nonsense like that.

Among academics (esp. mathematicians) this impression comes from the fact that if you look at almost any mathematics department, there aren't many people working in/on formal logic. But that's mostly because all of the mathematicians working on/in formal logic suffer the humiliation of sitting in the fancy new CS building with higher salaries and lower teaching loads ;)