ABSTRACT
This volume is the result of a critical edition established by Fabrizio Palombi and Deborah De Rosa on the basis of the transcriptions of the lectures that Gian-Carlo Rota gave at the Department of Mathematics of MIT, between 1974 and 1991.
The book was born as a lecture notes for the exclusive use of the students of the course held by Rota; in its first version, written in collaboration with Sean Murphy and Jeff Thompson, it consisted of 457 pages. Subsequently, between 1995 and 1998, during a period of joint work between Boston, Strasbourg, and Cortona, Rota expressed his desire to Palombi to edit the text for publication, by giving him the latest version available.
