For the philosophically unsophisticated, why is it significant that logic cannot be reduced to mathematics? What difference would it have made if that project had succeeded; what is import that it failed?

Your ability to balance your checkbook, or to draw logical inferences in everyday life, won’t be affected in the least by difficulties in figuring out just how logic and higher mathematics are connected. Nevertheless, the relationship between logic and mathematics has been an intriguing conundrum for the better part of two centuries. There have been many attempts to understand various aspects of logic mathematically, and perhaps the most famous is George Boole’s Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847), which laid the foundation for Boolean algebra. Far from being a failure, Boole’s effort seems to have been a smashing success, especially when we consider the extent to which Boolean algebra underlies modern digital computing. Nevertheless, the relationship between logic and mathematics can go in two directions, not just one, and so, just as one might try to understand various parts of logic mathematically, one can also try to understand various parts of mathematics logically. It is this further...