To found or not to found: that is the question

Abstract

Aim of this paper is to confute two views, the first about Schr\"oder's presumptive foundationalism, according to he founded mathematics on the calculus of relatives; the second one mantaining that Schr\"oder only in his last years (from 1890 onwards) focused on an universal and symbolic language (by him called pasigraphy). We will argue that, on the one hand Schr\"oder considered the problem of founding mathematics already solved by Dedekind, limiting himself in a mere translation of the Chain Theory in the language of the relatives. On the other hand, we will show that Schr\"oder's pasigraphy was connaturate to himself and that it roots in his very childhood and in his love for foreign languages.