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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer


First published Wed Mar 26, 2003; substantive revision Tue Nov 24, 2015

Dutch mathematician and philosopher who lived from 1881 to 1966. He is traditionally referred to as L.E.J.
Brouwer, with full initials, but was called Bertus by his friends.

In classical mathematics, he founded modern topology by establishing, for example, the topological
invariance of dimension and the fixpoint theorem. He also gave the first correct definition of dimension.

In philosophy, his brainchild is intuitionism, a revisionist foundation of mathematics. Intuitionism views


mathematics as a free activity of the mind, independent of any language or Platonic realm of objects, and
therefore bases mathematics on a philosophy of mind. The implications are twofold. First, it leads to a form of
constructive mathematics, in which large parts of classical mathematics are rejected. Second, the reliance on a
philosophy of mind introduces features that are absent from classical mathematics as well as from other forms
of constructive mathematics: unlike those, intuitionistic mathematics is not a proper part of classical
mathematics.

1. The Person
2. Chronology
3. Brief Characterization of Brouwer's Intuitionism
4. Brouwer's Development of Intuitionism
Bibliography
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries

1. The Person
Brouwer studied at the (municipal) University of Amsterdam where his most important teachers were
Diederik Korteweg and Gerrit Mannoury.

Korteweg (18481941) was professor of mathematics, mechanics and astronomy at the University of
Amsterdam from 18811918; the last five years as extraordinarius, so as to make place for Brouwer. Around
1900, Korteweg was the most important and influential mathematician in the Netherlands, and he contributed
much to the internationalisation of Dutch mathematics. A mathematical physicist trained by van der Waals, he
had a particular interest in mechanics and thermodynamics. Among his many results, the best-known is
probably the Korteweg-de Vries equation, describing the behaviour of waves in a shallow channel. Korteweg
also had a strong historical interest, and was chief editor of vols. XIXV of Christiaan Huygens' collected
works (19081925). Part of the correspondence with his PhD student Brouwer concerned the unification of
physical theories (see van Stigt, 1990, pp. 490498).

Mannoury (18671956) was a philosopher, mathematician, psychoanalyst, accountant, and political activist.
Largely an autodidact, it was he who introduced in the Netherlands both topology (in a series of papers of
18971900) and Peano's symbolic logic (in a lecture in 1903). In 1903 he was appointed privaatdocent
(unpaid lecturer) in the logical foundations of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, where Brouwer
was among his first and most enthusiastic students. His lectures have been published, in shortened and revised
form, as Mannoury, 1909. But it was Mannoury's earlier, topological papers that influenced the young
Brouwer decisively: the undertone of that work, Brouwer said in a speech in 1946, had changed his view of
mathematics from a collection of truths fascinating by their immovability, but horrifying by their lifelessness,
like stones from barren mountains of disconsolate infinity to a concern with what is built ... out of the
structural elements of our thinking (Brouwer, 1946B, pp. 192193). Brouwer was also very interested in
Mannoury's reflections on the uses and misuses of language in mathematics and philosophy. In 1917
Mannoury became professor extraordinarius, in 1918 ordinarius at the University of Amsterdam, succeeding
Korteweg at the chair of analytic and descriptive geometry, mechanics and philosophy of mathematics, until
1937. A large part of his career was devoted to furthering the development of significs, an analysis of
communicative acts starting from the ideas laid down by Victoria, Lady Welby in her paper Sense, Meaning
and Interpretation (Welby, 1896). Brouwer was also involved in that project.

Brouwer's principal (intuitionistic) students were Maurits Belinfante, Arend Heyting, and Johan de Iongh;
Heyting, in turn, was the teacher of Anne Troelstra and Dirk van Dalen, and de Iongh of Wim Veldman.
Brouwer's classes were also attended by Max Euwe, later to become world chess champion, who published a
game-theoretical paper on chess from the intuitionistic point of view (Euwe, 1929), and who would much
later deliver Brouwer's funeral speech. Among Brouwer's assistants were Heyting, Hans Freudenthal, Karl
Menger, and Witold Hurewicz, the latter two of whom were not intuitionistically inclined. The most
influential supporter of Brouwer's intuitionism outside the Netherlands at the time was, for a number of years,
Hermann Weyl (whose adaptation of intuitionistic analysis was not wholly coherent); also Husserl's student
Oskar Becker should be mentioned.

Brouwer seems to have been an independent and brilliant man of high moral standards, but with an
exaggerated sense of justice, making him at times pugnacious. As a consequence, in his life he energetically
fought many battles. To Mannoury's daughter, Brouwer once said: Indeed, your father is one of the few
people with whom I have never had a quarrel. But he brought out the good in people, and I the bad (Schmitz,
1990, p. 383).

From 1914 to 1928, Brouwer was member of the editiorial board of the Mathematische Annalen, and he was
the founding editor of Compositio Mathematica, which first appeared in 1934.

He was a member of, among others, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society in London, the
Preuische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, and the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gttingen.

Brouwer received honorary doctorates from the universities of Oslo (1929) and Cambridge (1954), and was
made Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion in 1932.

Brouwer's archive is kept at the Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. An edition of
correspondence and manuscripts is in preparation.

2. Chronology
1881 February 27, born in Overschie (since 1941 part of Rotterdam), The Netherlands.

1897 Enters the University of Amsterdam to study mathematics and physics.

1904 Obtains doctorandus title (MSc degree) in mathematics; first publication (on rotations in four
dimensional space); marries Lize de Holl (born 1870). They would have no children, but Lize had a daughter
from an earlier marriage. They move to Blaricum, near Amsterdam, where they would live for the rest of their
lives, although they also had houses in other places.

1907 Obtains doctor title with dissertation On the Foundations of Mathematics, under supervision of
Korteweg at the University of Amsterdam. (The original Dutch title of the dissertation was 'Over de
Grondslagen der Wiskunde'. The present entry will for the most part refer to works cited by using the titles of
English translations, with the bibliography providing information about the original publications.) It marks the
beginning of his intuitionistic reconstruction of mathematics. Later that year, Brouwer's wife graduates and
becomes a pharmacist. All his life, Brouwer did the bookkeeping for her and filled out the tax forms, and
sometimes he assisted behind the counter.

1908 First publication of his argument against the general validity of the Principle of the Excluded Middle in
The unreliability of the logical principles. First participation in an international conference, the Fourth
International Conference of Mathematicians in Rome.

19091913 In a very productive four years, Brouwer founds modern topology, as a chapter of classical
mathematics. Highlights: invariance of dimension, fixed point theorem, mapping degree, definition of
dimension. As van Dalen (2005, p. 450) observes, Brouwer's definition of dimension seems to be the first
reformulation of an inductive definition as a game. A pause in his intuitionistic program.

1909 Becomes privaatdocent (unpaid lecturer) at the University of Amsterdam. Inaugural lecture The Nature
of Geometry.

1909 Meets Hilbert in the Dutch seaside resort of Scheveningen. Brouwer much admires Hilbert and describes
their meeting in a letter to a friend as a beautiful new ray of light through my life (Brouwer & Adama van
Scheltema, 1984, p. 100). Twenty years later, Brouwer's relation with Hilbert would turn sour.

1911 First appearance of the names formalism and intuitionism in Brouwer's writings, in a review of
Mannoury's Methodological and philosophical remarks on elementary mathematics (1909).

1912 Elected member of the Royal Academy of Sciences (during World War II Dutch Academy of
Sciences, afterward Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences).

1912 Appointed full professor extraordinarius in the field of set theory, function theory, and axiomatics. His
philosophical inaugural lecture Intuitionisme en Formalisme is translated into English as Intuitionism and
Formalism and thus becomes, in 1913, the first publication on intuitionism in that language.

1913 Appointed full professor ordinarius, succeeding Korteweg, who had generously offered to vacate his
chair for the purpose.

1914 Invited to join the editorial board of the Mathematische Annalen; accepts the honour.

1918 Brouwer begins the systematic intuitionistic reconstruction of mathematics with his paper Founding Set
Theory Independently of the Principle of the Excluded Middle. Part One, General Set Theory.

1919 Receives offers for professorships in Gttingen and in Berlin; declines both.

1919 Intuitionistic Set Theory is the first piece of intuitionistic mathematics in a widely read international
journal, the Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung.

1920 Start of the Grundlagenstreit (Foundational Debate) with Brouwer's lecture at the
Naturforscherversammlung in Bad Nauheim, published in 1921, Does Every Real Number Have a
Decimal Expansion?; the debate was amplified by Weyl's defence of intuitionism in 1921, On the New
Foundational Crisis of Mathematics; Hilbert responds in 1922, The New Grounding of Mathematics.

1922 Co-founds, with Gerrit Mannoury, the man of letters Frederik van Eeden, and others, the Signific
Circle, aiming at spiritual and political progress through language reform. The Circle ends its meetings in
1926, but Mannoury continues its work.

1926 Lecture in Gttingen; as a result of a group dinner at Emmy Noether's house, Hilbert and Brouwer are
(for a brief period) on good terms again.

1927 Lecture series in Berlin; Hans Reichenbach and Andr Weil are in the audience, as is Brouwer's later
assistant Hans Freudenthal. The newspaper Berliner Tageblatt proposes a public debate between Brouwer and
Hilbert, to be held in its pages, but for some reason this is not realized. Neither does Brouwer complete the
book he is invited to write by the German publisher Walter de Gruyter. The lectures and an incomplete book
are published posthumously (Brouwer, 1992).

1928 March 10 and 14: two lectures in Vienna. Gdel is in the audience, as is Wittgenstein. It is said that the
first lecture made Wittgenstein return to philosophy. Brouwer spends a day with Wittgenstein.

1928 April: conversations with Husserl, who is in Amsterdam to lecture.

1928 Conflict over the Bologna conference. The German mathematicians are, for the first time since the
ending of World War I, admitted to an international conference again, but not quite as equals. Brouwer insists
that this is not fair, and that the conference should therefore be boycotted. Hilbert, who does not share this
view, is much chagrined by Brouwer's action and attends the conference as the leader of the German
delegation, the largest present.

19281929 Mathematische Annalenstreit, the conflict in the editorial board of Mathematische Annalen.
Hilbert, thinking he is about to die, feels a need to make sure that after his death Brouwer will not become too
influential, and expels him from the board in an unlawful way. (Hilbert's motivation as described here is
documented in letters from people close to him: Carathodory to Einstein, October 20, 1928; Blumenthal to
the publisher and editors of the Mathematische Annalen, November 16, 1928; Born to Einstein, November 20,
1928. Copies of these letters are in the Brouwer Archive at Utrecht University. Relevant quotations from these
can be found in van Dalen, 2005, p. 604 and p. 613). Einstein, also member of the board, refuses to support
Hilbert's action and does not want to have anything to do with the whole affair; most other board members do
not want to irritate Hilbert by opposing him. Brouwer vehemently protests. In the end, the whole board is
dissolved and immediately reassembled without Brouwer, in a strongly reduced size (in particular, Einstein
and Carathodory decline). The conflict leaves Brouwer mentally broken and isolated, and puts an end to a
very creative decade in his work. Now that the two main contestants are no longer able to carry it on, the
Grundlagenstreit is over.

19281930 Conflict with Karl Menger over the priority for the first correct definition of the notion of
dimension.

1929 August: theft of Brouwer's briefcase on the tram in Brussels, and with it of his mathematical notebook.
When neither the police nor a private detective hired for the purpose is able to find it again, he despairs of
ever being able to reconstruct its contents. Brouwer later said that this loss was instrumental in the shift of his
main interest from mathematics to philosophy.

1929 Begins preparations for the foundation of a new mathematical journal.

1934 Appearance of the first issue of Brouwer's own international journal, entitled Compositio Mathematica.

1934 Lecture series in Geneva.

19351941 Member of the municipal council of Blaricum for the local Neutral Party (in 1939 he wins the
elections by receiving 310 of the 1601 votes).

19401945 During the German Occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, Brouwer assists the resistance
and tries to help his Jewish friends and his students. In 1943, he advises the students to sign the declaration of
loyalty demanded by the Germans. Part of his explanation, after the war, is that signing would provide the
students with the relative peace needed to build up and carry out resistance activities. He is met with
skepticism (but is supported by Mannoury). Because of this and some similar perhaps unfortunate attempts at
shrewdness during the occupation, after the liberation he is suspended for a few months. Deeply offended,
Brouwer considers emigration to South Africa or the USA.

1942 Publishes three short notes again on intuitionistic foundations, the first since 1933.

19451950 Conflict over the journal Compositio Mathematica. The journal had not appeared during the war,
and an effort is made to bring it back to life. Difficulties in assembling a new board of editors arise because of
Brouwer's damaged reputation. In the end, Brouwer's name remains on the title page but in effect he is
removed from the board of the journal he had founded.

19471951 Annual lecture series in Cambridge, England. Brouwer plans to turn them into a book, but this
does not happen. He completes, however, five of the planned six chapters, and these are published
poshumously (Brouwer, 1981).

1948 Resumes his foundational program with a paper that exploits the notion of the creating subject.
Beginning of another creative period.

1949 Opposes a plan to have his collected papers published, on the ground that he has no time to write
annotations that reflect his original as well as his present views on them, which he considers would be the
scientifically responsible thing to do.

1951 Retires from the University of Amsterdam. Cooling off of his relationship with Arend Heyting, his
successor at the post of director of the Mathematical Institute, as a result of disagreement over the exact role
the retired Brouwer could still play there.

1952 Lectures in London and in Cape Town.

1953 Lectures in Helsinki, where he stays with Von Wright. Lecture tour through the USA (among others
MIT, Princeton, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Berkeley, Chicago) and Canada (Canadian Mathematical
Congress in Kingston, Ontario). In Princeton, he visits Gdel.

1955 Publishes his last new paper (based on his lecture at the Boole conference in Dublin the year before).

1959 Death of Mrs Brouwer, 89 years old. Brouwer declines an offer for a 1-year position at the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver.

1962 Brouwer is offered a position in Montana.

1966 December 2: dies in Blaricum, The Netherlands, 85 years old, when he is hit by a car in front of his
house.

3. Brief Characterization of Brouwer's Intuitionism


Based on his philosophy of mind, on which Kant and Schopenhauer were the main influences, Brouwer
characterized mathematics primarily as the free activity of exact thinking, an activity which is founded on the
pure intuition of (inner) time. No independent realm of objects and no language play a fundamental role. He
thus strived to avoid the Scylla of platonism (with its epistemological problems) and the Charybdis of
formalism (with its poverty of content). As, on Brouwer's view, there is no determinant of mathematical truth
outside the activity of thinking, a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced its truth (by
having carried out an appropriate mental construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the
subject has experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate mental construction is not possible).
Hence Brouwer can claim that there are no non-experienced truths (Brouwer, 1975, p.488).
Brouwer was prepared to follow his philosophy of mind to its ultimate conclusions; whether the reconstructed
mathematics was compatible or incompatible with classical mathematics was a secondary question, and never
decisive. In thus granting philosophy priority over traditional mathematics, he showed himself a revisionist.
And indeed, whereas intuitionistic arithmetic is a subsystem of classical arithmetic, in analysis the situation is
different: not all of classical analysis is intuitionistically acceptable, but neither is all of intuitionistic analysis
classically acceptable. Brouwer accepted this consequence wholeheartedly.

4. Brouwer's Development of Intuitionism


The following is a brief history of Brouwer's ideas in philosophy, mathematics, and logic. There is also a more
detailed separate article on The Development of Intuitionistic Logic.

Brouwer's little book Life, Art and Mysticism of 1905, while not developing his foundations of mathematics as
such, is a key to those foundations as developed in his dissertation on which he was working at the same time
and which was finished two years later. Among a variety of other things, such as his views on society and
women in particular, the book contains his basic ideas on mind, language, ontology and epistemology.

These ideas are applied to mathematics in his dissertation On the Foundations of Mathematics, defended in
1907; it is the general philosophy and not the paradoxes that initiates the development of intuitionism (once
this had begun, solutions to the paradoxes emerged). As did Kant, Brouwer founds mathematics on a pure
intuition of time (but Brouwer rejects pure intuition of space).

Brouwer holds that mathematics is an essentially languageless activity, and that language can only give
descriptions of mathematical activity after the fact. This leads him to deny axiomatic approaches any
foundational role in mathematics. Also, he construes logic as the study of patterns in linguistic renditions of
mathematical activity, and therefore logic is dependent on mathematics (as the study of patterns) and not vice
versa. It is these considerations that motivate him to introduce the distinction between mathematics and
metamathematics (for which he used the term second order mathematics), which he would explain to
Hilbert in conversations in 1909 (Brouwer, 1928A2, p. 375n.2).

With this view in place, Brouwer sets out to reconstruct Cantorian set theory. When an attempt (in a draft of
the dissertation) at making constructive sense out of Cantor's second number class (the class of all
denumerably infinite ordinals) and higher classes of even greater ordinals fails, he realizes that this cannot be
done and rejects the higher number classes, leaving only all finite ordinals and an unfinished or open-ended
collection of denumerably infinite ordinals. Thus, as a consequence of his philosophical views, he consciously
puts aside part of generally accepted mathematics. Soon he would do the same with a principle of logic, the
principle of the excluded middle (PEM), but in the dissertation he still thinks of it as correct but useless,
interpreting p p as p p.

In The Unreliability of the Logical Principles of 1908, Brouwer formulates, in general terms, his criticism
of PEM: although in the simple form of p p, the principle will never lead to a contradiction, there are
instances of it for which one has, constructively speaking, no positive grounds. Brouwer names some.
Because they do not in the strict sense refute PEM, they are known as weak counterexamples. See the
supplement on Weak Counterexamples.

The innovation that gives intuitionism a much wider range than other varieties of constructive mathematics
(including the one in Brouwer's dissertation) are the choice sequences. These are potentially infinite
sequences of numbers (or other mathematical objects) chosen one after the other by the subject. Choice
sequences made their first appearance as intuitionistically acceptable objects in a book review in 1914; the
principle that makes them mathematically tractable, the continuity principle, was formulated in Brouwer's
lectures notes of 1916. The main use of choice sequences is the reconstruction of analysis; points on the
continuum (real numbers) are identified with choice sequences satisfying certain conditions. Choice
sequences are collected together using a device called spread, which performs a function similar to that of
the Cantorian set in classical analysis, and initially, Brouwer even uses the word Menge (set) for it.
Brouwer develops a theory of spreads, and a theory of point sets based on it, in the two-part paper Founding
Set Theory Independently of the Principle of the Excluded Middle (1918/1919).

The answer to the question in the title of Brouwer's paper Does Every Real Number Have a Decimal
Expansion? (1921A) turns out to be no. Brouwer demonstrates that one can construct choice sequences
satisfying the Cauchy condition that in their exact development depend on an as yet open problem. No
decimal expansion can be constructed until the open problem is solved; on Brouwer's strict constructivist
view, this means that no decimal expansion exists until the open problem is solved. In this sense, one can
construct real numbers (i.e., converging choice sequences) that do not yet have a decimal expansion.

In a lecture in 1923, again using choice sequences and open problems, Brouwer devises a general technique,
now known as Brouwerian counterexamples, to generate weak counterexamples to classical principles: On
the Significance of the Principle of the Excluded Middle in Mathematics (Brouwer 1924N).

The basic theorems of intuitionistic analysis the bar theorem, fan theorem, and continuity theorem are
in On the Domains of Definition of Functions of 1927. The first two are structural theorems on spreads; the
third (not to be confused with the continuity principle for choice sequences) states that every total function
[0,1] is continuous and even uniformly continuous. The fan theorem is, in fact, a corollary of the bar
theorem; combined with the continuity principle, which is not classically valid, it yields the continuity
theorem, which is not classically valid either. The bar and fan theorems on the other hand are classically valid,
although the classical and intuitionistic proofs for them are not exchangeable. The classical proofs are
intuitionistically not acceptable because of the way they depend on PEM; the intuitionistic proofs are
classically not acceptable because they depend on reflection on the structure of mental proofs. In this
reflection, Brouwer introduced the notion of the fully analysed or canonical form of a proof, which would
be adopted much later by Martin-Lf and by Dummett. In a footnote, Brouwer mentions that such proofs,
which he identifies with mental objects in the subject's mind, are often infinite.

Intuitionist Reflections on Formalism of 1928 identifies and discusses four key differences between
formalism and intuitionism, all having to do either with the role of PEM or with the relation between
mathematics and language. Brouwer emphasizes, as he had done in his dissertation, that formalism
presupposes contentual mathematics at the metalevel. He also here presents his first strong counterexample, a
refutation of PEM in the form x(Px Px), by showing that it is false that every real number is either
rational or irrational. See the supplement on Strong Counterexamples.

Of the two lectures held in Vienna in 1928 Mathematics, Science and Language (1929A) and The
Structure of the Continuum (1930A) the first is for the most part of a philosophical nature while the
second is more mathematical. In Mathematics, Science and Language, Brouwer states his general views on
the relations between the three subjects mentioned in the title, following a genetic approach, and stressing the
role of the will. A longer version of this lecture was published as Will, Knowledge and Speech (1933A2); it
contains the first explicit remarks about a notion that had been present from the start, now known as that of
the idealized mathematician or creating subject.

Consciousness, Philosophy and Mathematics (1949C) once again goes through Brouwer's philosophy of
mind and some of its consequences for mathematics. Comparison with Life, Art, and Mysticism,
Mathematics, Science and Language, and Volition, Knowledge, Language reveals that Brouwer's general
philosophy over the years developed considerably, but mainly in depth.

In 1949, Brouwer (1949A) publishes the first of a new class of strong counterexamples, a class that differs
from Brouwer's earlier strong counterexample (1928, see above) in that the type of argument, which now goes
by the name of creating subject argument, involves essential reference to the temporal structure of the
creating subject's mathematical activity (Heyting, 1956, chs. III and VIII; van Atten, 2003, chs.4 and 5).
Brouwer's example shows that there is a case where the double negation principle in the form of x(Px
Px), leads to a contradiction (The Non-equivalence of the Constructive and the Negative Order Relation
on the Continuum, in Dutch). The first publication of a strong counterexample in English had to wait till
1954, in An Example of Contradictority in Classical Theory of Functions (1954F). This polemical title
should be understood as follows: if one keeps to the letter of the classical theory but in its interpretation
substitutes intuitionistic notions for their classical counterparts, one arrives at a contradiction. So it is not a
counterexample in the strict sense of the word, but rather a non-interpretability result. As intuitionistic logic
is, formally speaking, part of classical logic, and intuitionistic arithmetic is part of classical arithmetic, the
existence of strong counterexamples must depend on an essentially non-classical ingredient, and this is of
course the choice sequences.

The creating subject argument is, after the earlier introduction of choice sequences and the proof of the bar
theorem, a new step in the exploitation of the subjective aspects of intuitionism. There is no principled reason
why it should be the last.

Bibliography
A full bibliography of Brouwer's writings can be found in

van Dalen, D., 1997, A bibliography of L.E.J. Brouwer, Utrecht Logic Group Preprint Series, no.176
[Available online]. Updated version in van Atten, M., Boldini, P., Bourdeau, M., and Heinzmann, G.
(eds.), 2008, One Hundred Years of Intuitionism (19072007). The Cerisy Conference, Basel: Birkhuser,
pp. 343390.

Availability of Brouwer's writings

Facsimiles of almost all of Brouwer's published papers can be found in

Brouwer, L.E.J., 1975, Collected Works 1. Philosophy and Foundations of Mathematics, A. Heyting (ed.),
Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1976, Collected Works 2. Geometry, Analysis, Topology and Mechanics, H. Freudenthal
(ed.), Amsterdam: North-Holland.

In the Collected Works, papers in Dutch have been translated into English (without naming the translator(s)),
but papers in French or German have not. English translations of several of them can be found in

van Heijenoort, J., ed., 1967, From Frege to Gdel. A Sourcebook in Mathematical Logic, 18791931,
Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
Mancosu, P., ed., 1998, From Hilbert to Brouwer. The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the
1920s, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

An English translation of Brouwer's little book Leven, Kunst en Mystiek of 1905, of which the Collected
Works contain only excerpts, is

Brouwer, L.E.J., 1996, Life, Art and Mysticism, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 37(3):389429.
Translated by Walter van Stigt, who provides an introduction on pp.381387.

The Berlin lectures of 1927 have been published in

Brouwer, L.E.J., 1992, Intuitionismus, D. van Dalen (ed.), Mannheim: BI-Wissenschaftsverlag.

The Cambridge lectures of 19461951, which are recommended as Brouwer's own introduction to
intuitionism, have been published as
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1981, Brouwer's Cambridge Lectures on Intuitionism, D. van Dalen (ed.), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

A selection of Brouwer's correspondence has been published as

van Dalen, D., ed., 2011, The Selected Correspondence of L.E.J. Brouwer, London: Springer. An online
supplement (link and password on the copyright page of the book) presents most of the extant
correspondence, but without English translations.

Of particular biographical interest is the correspondence between Brouwer and his friend, the socialist poet
C.S. Adama van Scheltema, which covers the years 18981924. The Selected Correspondence presents a
number of these letters in English. The full correspondence has been published in Dutch, with notes, an
introduction, and an appendix on Brouwer, as

Brouwer, L.E.J., & Adama van Scheltema, C.S., 1984, Droeve Snaar, Vriend van Mij. Brieven, D. van Dalen
(ed.), Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers.

Cited texts by Brouwer

Brouwer's writings are referred to according to the scheme in the bibliography van Dalen, 1997.

Brouwer, L.E.J., 1905, Leven, Kunst en Mystiek. Partial English translation in Brouwer, 1975, pp. 19. Full
English translation (by W. van Stigt) in Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 37(3):389429.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1907, Over de Grondslagen der Wiskunde, Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
English translation in Brouwer, 1975, pp. 11101.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1908, De onbetrouwbaarheid der logische principes, Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 2:
152158. English translation in Brouwer, 1975, pp. 107111.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1914, A. Schoenflies und H. Hahn. Die Entwickelung der Mengenlehre und ihrer
Anwendungen, Leipzig und Berlin 1913, Jahresb. D.M.V., 23: 7883.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1918B, Begrndung der Mengenlehre unabhngig vom logischen Satz vom
ausgeschlossenen Dritten. Erster Teil, Allgemeine Mengenlehre, KNAW Verhandelingen, 5: 143.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1919A, Begrndung der Mengenlehre unabhngig vom logischen Satz vom
ausgeschlossenen Dritten. Zweiter Teil, Theorie der Punktmengen, KNAW Verhandelingen, 7: 133.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1919D, Intuitionistische Mengenlehre , Jahresb. D.M.V., 28: 203208. English translation
in Mancosu 1998 pp. 2327.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1921A, Besitzt jede reelle Zahl eine Dezimalbruchentwicklung?, Mathematische Annalen,
83: 201210. English translation in Mancosu 1998 pp. 2835.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1924N, ber die Bedeutung des Satzes vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten in der Mathematik,
insbesondere in der Funktionentheorie, Journal fr die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 154: 17.
English translation in van Heijenoort 1967, pp. 335341.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1927B, ber Definitionsbereiche von Funktionen, Mathematische Annalen, 97: 6075.
English translation of sections 13 in van Heijenoort 1967, pp. 457463.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1928A2, Intuitionistische Betrachtungen ber den Formalismus, KNAW Proceedings, 31:
374379. English translation in Mancosu 1998, pp. 4044.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1929A, Mathematik, Wissenschaft und Sprache, Monatshefte fr Mathematik und Physik,
36: 153164. English translation in Mancosu 1998, pp.4553.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1930A, Die Struktur des Kontinuums, Wien: Komitee zur Veranstaltung von Gastvortrgen
auslndischer Gelehrter der exakten Wissenschaften. English translation in Mancosu 1998, pp. 5463.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1933A2, Willen, weten, spreken, in De Uitdrukkingswijze der Wetenschap, L.E.J. Brouwer
et al., Groningen: Noordhoff, 4563. English translation in van Stigt 1990, pp. 418431.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1946B, Toespraak van Prof.Dr. L.E.J. Brouwer en antwoord van Prof.Dr. G. Mannoury,
Jaarboek der Universiteit van Amsterdam 19461947, II. English translation of Brouwer's part in
Brouwer, 1975, pp. 472476. English translation of Mannoury's reply: Synthese, 5: 514515.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1948A, Essentieel negatieve eigenschappen, Indagationes Mathematicae, 10: 322323.
English translation in Brouwer, 1975, pp. 478479.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1949A, De non-aequivalentie van de constructieve en de negatieve orderelatie in het
continuum, Indagationes Mathematicae, 11: 3739. English translation in Brouwer, 1975, pp. 495496.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1949B, Contradictoriteit der elementaire meetkunde, KNAW Proc., 52: 315316. English
translation in Brouwer, 1975, pp. 497498.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1949C, Consciousness, philosophy and mathematics, Proceedings of the 10th International
Congress of Philosophy, Amsterdam 1948, 3: 12351249.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1954F, An example of contradictority in classical theory of functions, Indag. Math., 16:
204205.
Brouwer, L.E.J., 1955, The effect of intuitionism on classical algebra of logic, Proceedings of the Royal
Irish Academy, 57: 113116.

Cited primary texts by others

Euwe, M., 1929, Mengentheoretische Betrachtungen ber das Schachspiel, Ned. Akad. Wetensch. Proc.,
32:633644.
Hilbert, D., 1922, Neubegrndung der Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung, Hamburger Math.
Seminarabhandlungen, 1:157177. English translation The New Grounding of Mathematics: first
report in (Mancosu 1998).
Mannoury, G., 1909, Methodologisches und Philosophisches zur Elementar-Mathematik, Haarlem: Visser.
Welby, V., 1896, Sense, Meaning and Interpretation, Mind, N.S., 5(17):2437; (18):186202.
Weyl, H., 1921, ber die neue Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik, Mathematische Zeitschrift, 10:3979.
English translation On the New Foundational Crisis of Mathematics in (Mancosu 1998).

Secondary Literature

Dummett, M., 1977, Elements of Intuitionism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2nd, revised edition, 2000,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
An overview of intuitionism. Philosophically, it seems closer to Wittgenstein than to Brouwer.
Franchella, M., 2015, Brouwer and Nietzsche: Views about Life, Views about Logic, History and
Philosophy of Logic, [Advance publication online].
A comparison of Nietschze's and Brouwer's critical views on the role of logic.
Hesseling, D.E., 2003, Gnomes in the Fog. The Reception of Brouwer's Intuitionism in the 1920s, Basel:
Birkhauser.
A detailed historical discussion of the reactions to Brouwer's mature intuitionism during the
foundational debate.
Heyting, A., 1956, Intuitionism. An introduction, Amsterdam: North-Holland. 2nd, revised edition, 1966. 3rd,
revised edition, 1971.
Probably the most influential book on the subject ever written. In a style that is more down-to-earth
and oecumenical than Brouwer's, Heyting presents the intuitionistic versions of various basic subjects
in everyday mathematics. Brouwer and Heyting have some philosophical disagreements that make a
difference in their appreciation of some aspects of intuitionistic mathematics. No comments of
Brouwer on this book are known.
Largeault, J., 1993, Intuition et Intuitionisme, Paris: Vrin.
An overview of intuitionism, staying close to Brouwer, and showing a good sense of the historical
background of Brouwer's notion of intuition.
Placek, T., 1999, Mathematical Intuitionism and Intersubjectivity, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
A comparison of the arguments for intuitionism advanced by, respectively, Brouwer, Heyting, and
Dummett, in particular with respect to the possibility of intersubjective validity of intuitionistic
mathematics.
Schmitz, H.W., 1990, De Hollandse Significa. Een Reconstructie van de Geschiedenis van 1892 tot 1926,
Assen: van Gorcum.
A detailed monograph on the development of the Signific Movement in the Netherlands, in Dutch
(translated from the author's German Habilitationsschrift).
Schmitz, H.W., ed., 1990, Essays on Significs: Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of
the Birth of Victoria Lady Welby, 18371912, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Historical and systematical essays on Lady Welby, the relations between significs and semiotics, and
the Signific Movement in the Netherlands.
van Atten, M., 2004, On Brouwer, Belmont (CA): Wadsworth.
A philosophical introduction to intuitionism as conceived by Brouwer, with extensive treatments of
the proof of the bar theorem, the creating subject, and intersubjectivity.
van Atten, M., Boldini, P., Bourdeau, M., and Heinzmann, G., eds., 2008, One Hundred Years of Intuitionism
(19072007). The Cerisy Conference, Basel: Birkhuser.
Part I consists of a number of historical and systematical papers on Brouwer and Brouwerian
intuitionism. Part II contains, among others, two papers on Brouwer in relation to French recursors of
intuitionism. Part III includes a paper on the Hilbert-Brouwer controversy from a historical-
mathematical perspective.
van Atten, M. and Tragesser, R., Mysticism and Mathematics: Brouwer, Gdel and the Common Core
Thesis, in Klarheit in Religionsdingen, Deppert, W. & Rahnfeld, M., eds., Leipzig: Leipziger
Universitatsverlag, 145160.
A comparison of Brouwer's and Gdel's interest in mysticism and of their views on its relation to
mathematics.
van Dalen, D., 1999/2005, Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist, 2 volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
The standard biography of Brouwer. Volume 1, The Dawning Revolution, covers the years 18811928,
volume 2, Hope and Disillusion, covers 19291966.
van Dalen, D., 2001, L.E.J. Brouwer 18811966. Een Biografie. Het Heldere Licht van de Wiskunde,
Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
A popular biography in 1 volume, in Dutch.
van Dalen, D., 2013, L.E.J. BrouwerTopologist, Intuitionist, Philosopher. How Mathematics Is Rooted in
Life, London: Springer.
A somewhat revised version in 1 volume of the biography (van Dalen 1999/2005).
van Stigt, W., 1990, Brouwer's Intuitionism, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Contains interesting philosophical discussions and gives English translations of material from the
Brouwer archive. The biographical sketch has now been superseded by (van Dalen, 1999/2005) and
(van Dalen, 2001).

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Other Internet Resources


Review of Hesseling's Gnomes in the Fog in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic (Postscript)
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Related Entries
Cantor, Georg | Hilbert, David | Kant, Immanuel: philosophy of mathematics | logic, history of: intuitionistic
logic | logic: classical | logic: intuitionistic | mathematics, philosophy of | mathematics, philosophy of:
formalism | mathematics, philosophy of: intuitionism | mathematics: constructive | Platonism: in metaphysics |
Platonism: in the philosophy of mathematics | Weyl, Hermann | Wittgenstein, Ludwig: philosophy of
mathematics

Acknowledgments

I thank Dirk van Dalen and the editors for their comments on earlier versions.

Copyright 2015 by
Mark van Atten <vanattenmark@gmail.com>

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