Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

ian,

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

, and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

. Couturat was a pioneer of the

constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

Ido Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...

Life and education

Born in

Ris-Orangis Ris-Orangis () is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. Inhabitants of Ris-Orangis are known as ''Rissois''. History The commune of Ris-Orangis was created in 1793 by the merger of the com ...

Essonne Essonne () is a department of France in the southern Île-de-France region. It is named after the river Essonne. In 2019, it had a population of 1,301,659 across 194 communes.École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

to study

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. In 1895 he lectured in philosophy at the

University of Toulouse The University of Toulouse (french: Université de Toulouse) was a university in the French city of Toulouse that was established by papal bull in 1229, making it one of the earliest universities to emerge in Europe. Suppressed during the Frenc ...

and 1897 lectured in

philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's ...

at the

University of Caen Normandy The University of Caen Normandy (French: ''Université de Caen Normandie''), also known as Unicaen, is a public university in Caen, France. History The institution was founded in 1432 by John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, the first rector ...

, taking a stand in favor of

transfinite number In mathematics, transfinite numbers are numbers that are "infinite" in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers, yet not necessarily absolutely infinite. These include the transfinite cardinals, which are cardinal numbers used to qua ...

s. After a time in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

studying the writings of

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...

, he became an assistant to Henri-Louis Bergson at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...

in 1905.

Career

He was ''the'' French advocate of the

symbolic logic Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal ...

that emerged in the years before World War I, thanks to the writings of

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...

Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The stand ...

and his school, and especially to ''

The Principles of Mathematics ''The Principles of Mathematics'' (''PoM'') is a 1903 book by Bertrand Russell, in which the author presented his famous paradox and argued his thesis that mathematics and logic are identical. The book presents a view of the foundations of ...

'' by Couturat's friend and correspondent

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

. Like Russell, Couturat saw symbolic logic as a tool to advance both mathematics and the

. In this, he was opposed by

Henri Poincaré Jules Henri Poincaré ( S: stress final syllable ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The ...

, who took considerable exception to Couturat's efforts to interest the French in symbolic logic. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Couturat was in broad agreement with the

logicism In the philosophy of mathematics, logicism is a programme comprising one or more of the theses that — for some coherent meaning of 'logic' — mathematics is an extension of logic, some or all of mathematics is reducible to logic, or some or all ...

of Russell, while Poincaré anticipated

Brouwer Brouwer (also Brouwers and de Brouwer) is a Dutch and Flemish surname. The word ''brouwer'' means 'beer brewer'. Brouwer * Adriaen Brouwer (1605–1638), Flemish painter * Alexander Brouwer (b. 1989), Dutch beach volleyball player * Andries Bro ...

intuitionism In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of f ...

. His first major publication was Couturat (1896). In 1901, he published ''La Logique de Leibniz'', a detailed study of

the logician, based on his examination of the huge Leibniz ''

Nachlass ''Nachlass'' (, older spelling ''Nachlaß'') is a German word, used in academia to describe the collection of manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and so on left behind when a scholar dies. The word is a compound in German: ''nach'' means "after ...

'' in Hanover. Even though Leibniz had died in 1716, his ''Nachlass'' was cataloged only in 1895. Only then was it possible to determine the extent of Leibniz's unpublished work on logic. In 1903, Couturat published much of that work in another large volume, his ''Opuscules et Fragments Inedits de Leibniz'', containing many of the documents he had examined while writing ''La Logique''. Couturat was thus the first to appreciate that Leibniz was the greatest logician during the more than 2000 years that separate

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

from

George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ire ...

and Augustus De Morgan. A significant part of the 20th century Leibniz revival is grounded in Couturat's editorial and exegetical efforts. This work on Leibniz attracted Russell, also the author of a 1900 book on Leibniz, and thus began their professional correspondence and friendship. In 1905, Couturat published a work on logic and the

foundations of mathematics Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophy, philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the natu ...

(with an appendix on Kant's philosophy of mathematics) that was originally conceived as a translation of Russell's ''Principles of Mathematics''. In the same year, he published ''L'Algèbre de la logique'', a classic introduction to

Boolean algebra In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denoted 1 and 0, whereas in e ...

and the works of C.S. Peirce and Ernst Schröder. In 1907, Couturat helped found the

, an offshoot of

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

, and was Ido's principal advocate over the remainder of his life. By advocating a constructed international language, constructed along logical principles and with a vocabulary taken from existing European languages, Couturat was paralleling

Peano Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The stand ...

's advocacy of

Interlingua Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...

. By pushing Ido, Couturat walked in Leibniz's footsteps; Leibniz called for the creation a universal symbolic and conceptual language he named the

characteristica universalis The Latin term ''characteristica universalis'', commonly interpreted as ''universal characteristic'', or ''universal character'' in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scientif ...

. Couturat, a confirmed

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...

, was killed when his car was hit by a car carrying orders for the mobilization of the

French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...

, in the first stage of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. He appears as a character in

Joseph Skibell Joseph Skibell (born October 18, 1959) is a novelist and essayist living in Atlanta, Georgia and Tesuque, New Mexico. Skibell is the author of three novels, which use elements of history and fantasy, a collection of true stories, and a forthco ...

's 2010 novel, ''A Curable Romantic''.

Works

* 1896
''De Platonicis mythis''
''Thesim Facultati Litterarum Parisiensi proponebat Ludovicus Couturat, Scholae Normalae olim alumnus''. Parisiis: Felix Alcan Bibliopola. 120 p. * 1896:
De l'Infini mathématique
'. Republished 1975, Georg Olms. * 1901:
La Logique de Leibniz
'. Republished 1961, Georg Olms

* 1903: ''Opuscules et Fragments Inédits de Leibniz''. Republished 1966, Georg Olms. * 1903: (with

Léopold Leau Léopold Leau (1868-1943) was a French mathematician, primarily known for his ties to international auxiliary languages. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded on 7 January 1901 on Leau's initiative. ...

''Histoire de la langue universelle''
Paris: Hachette. Republished 2001, Olms. * 1905.
Les Principes des Mathématiques: avec un appendice sur la philosophie des mathématiques de Kant
'. Republished 1965, Georg Olms. * 1905:
L'Algèbre de la logique
'. 1914: P. E. B. Jourdain translator
The Algebra of Logic
Open Court, from

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

. * 1906: ¨''Pour la langue internationale'', Päris * 1907: (with Léopold Leau) ''Les nouvelles langues internationales''. Paris: Hachette, republished 2001, Olms. * 1910: ''Étude sur la dérivation dans la langue internationale''. Paris: Delagrave. 100 p. * 1910: (with

Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth ce ...

, R. Lorenz,

Wilhelm Ostwald Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (; 4 April 1932) was a Baltic German chemist and German philosophy, philosopher. Ostwald is credited with being one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Walther Nernst, ...

and L.Pfaundler)
International Language and Science: Considerations on the Introduction of an International Language into Science
', Constable and Company Limited, London. * 1915: (with

Louis de Beaufront Louis Chevreux (3 October 1855, Paris – 8 January 1935, Thézy-Glimont), commonly known as Louis de Beaufront, was a major influence in the development of Ido, an international auxiliary language. Beaufront was initially an advocate of Esperant ...

) ''Dictionnari Français-Ido''. Paris: Chaix, 586 p.

References

Sources

* Proceedings of a conference. * Bibliography contains 27 items by Couturat.

External links

* *
Auteur Couturat
on French Wikisource * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Couturat, Louis 1868 births 1914 deaths People from Ris-Orangis Linguists from France French logicians French mathematicians French philosophers École Normale Supérieure alumni Idists Constructed language creators Logicians Road incident deaths in France French male writers Philosophers of language