History and Philosophy of Constructive Type Theory

This is a survey of Martin-Lof's constructive type theory, considerable parts of which have only been presented by Martin-Lof in lecture form or as part of conference talks. Sommaruga surveys the prehistory of type theory and its highly complex development through eight different stages from 1970 to 1995. He also provides a systematic presentation of the latest version of the theory, as offered by Martin-Lof at Leiden University in Fall 1993. This presentation gives a fuller and updated account of the system. Earlier, brief presentations took no account of the issues related to the type-theoretical approach to logic and the foundations of mathematics, while here they are accorded an entire part of the book.