This volume presents the first English translation of all the papers delivered at the international congress on the philosophy of mathematics held in Paris in 1914, first published in French in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale.

The congress brought together several prominent mathematicians, logicians, and philosophers of the period, and was intended to inaugurate a series of similar events. The outbreak of the First World War and the ensuing transformation of the international political landscape brought this projected series to an end. The translated papers are accompanied by an extensive Preface and two substantial commentaries by the volume editors, which offer readers a detailed historical framework for the congress and useful guidance for understanding the issues discussed there.

This volume will serve as a reference work for scholars and students working on these representative figures.

Paolo Bussotti (b. 1966) is Associate Professor of History of Science and Technology at the University of Udine. He earned his degree in the History of Science and Technology from the University of Pisa and completed his PhD in Historical Sciences at the University of San Marino in 1996, focusing on the foundations of mathematics. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (2003–2005), which led to the publication of his book From Fermat to Gauss: Indefinite Descent and Methods of Reduction in Number Theory (2006). Between 2013 and 2014, he held a second Humboldt Fellowship at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, resulting in the monograph The Complex Itinerary of Leibniz’s Planetary Theory (2015). In 2019, he received a further Humboldt Fellowship at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, leading to the publication of Chasles and Projective Geometry: The Birth of a Global Foundational Programme for Mathematics, Mechanics and Philosophy (2024). Since 2010, he has been collaborating with Prof. Raffaele Pisano on a project devoted to Newton’s Principia (Geneva Edition), a joint research effort that has produced numerous co-authored papers.

Mario Castellana (b. 1949) is Senior Professor of Philosophy of Science and Epistemology at the University of Salento. His research interests focus on 20th-century debates on the philosophy of mathematics and physics, as well as the relationship between epistemology and the history of science in French- and Italian-speaking contexts. He has examined figures such as Gaston Bachelard, Federigo Enriques, Albert Lautman, Hélène Metzger, Jean Desanti, Gilles Châtelet, and others, editing several of their works in French editions and Italian translations. His essays have appeared in journals such as the Revue de Synthèse. His published monographs include: Il surrazionalismo di Gaston Bachelard, 1974; Epistemologia debole, 1985; Razionalismi senza dogmi. Per una epistemologia della fisica matematica, 2004; Cuori pensanti in filosofia della scienza, 2018; Federigo Enriques e la ‘nuova epistemologia’, 2019; and Il dibattito in area francofona sul pensiero matematico e Kurt Gödel, 2021.