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Was George Boole Really the ‘Father’ of Modern Logic?

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A Boole Anthology

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Abstract

Was George Boole really the ‘father’ of modern logic? I confess that I regard this question as rather academic, because it is not possible to answer it convincingly. A typical answer to questions of this kind is: ‘it depends’. In our case it depends on what is meant by the ‘father of a scientific discipline’, it depends on the understanding of modern logic, and it even depends on one’s own attitude towards the notion of scientific development.

Lecture delivered on 26 September 1997 at the conference ‘Boole 1997: One Hundred Fifty Years of Mathematical Analysis of:ogic’ (26–27 September 1997) at Lausanne. I would like to thank Christian Thiel and James Gasser for their comments, and Mairi Barkei for her offors to improve my English.

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Peckhaus, V. (2000). Was George Boole Really the ‘Father’ of Modern Logic?. In: Gasser, J. (eds) A Boole Anthology. Synthese Library, vol 291. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9385-4_15

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