The IOth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, which took place in Florence in August 1995, offered a vivid and comprehensive picture of the present state of research in all directions of Logic and Philosophy of Science. The final program counted 51 invited lectures and around 700 contributed papers, distributed in 15 sections. Following the tradition of previous LMPS-meetings, some authors, whose papers aroused particular interest, were invited to submit their works for publication in a collection of selected contributed papers. Due to the large number of interesting contributions, it was decided to split the collection into two distinct volumes: one covering the areas of Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computer Science, the other focusing on the general Philosophy of Science and the Foundations of Physics. As a leading choice criterion for the present volume, we tried to combine papers containing relevant technical results in pure and applied logic with papers devoted to conceptual analyses, deeply rooted in advanced present-day research. After all, we believe this is part of the genuine spirit underlying the whole enterprise of LMPS­ studies.