List, After receiving an off-list suggestion to pick up an introduction to symbolic logic and use Wikipedia as a resource, it will be well for me to clarify that I am quite familiar with symbolic logic, having mastered sentential logic and predicate calculus, dabbled in modal logic, and gotten to be familiar with Peirce’s graphical logic. The purpose of understanding Boole’s work is not to learn symbolic logic—which is in fact quite different in many respects from Boolean calculus—but specifically to understand better the genesis of Peirce’s work in logic, which I take to be a broader and deeper conception of logic than one finds in studies of symbolic logic.
Sincerely, Franklin Ransom Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 10, 2022, at 12:03 AM, pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com wrote: > > > Hello list, > > It has been some years since I lasted posted, and I have only been lurking > ever since. > > I am hoping to get some advice on reading George Boole’s An Investigation of > the Laws of Thought. This is a text which CS Peirce references in his earlier > logical work, and I was hoping to follow along Peirce’s early work by > understanding what he used as a basis for developing his own ideas. > > I’ve had some difficulty though in trying to decipher Boole’s work. His > earlier essay on his work I was able to get through, but the book proves more > challenging. At first I tried an online PDF, but what I found had noticeable > typos, the sort of thing one really wants to avoid in a work using a lot of > abstract symbols. > > So some years ago I acquired a hard copy of the currently printed version > from Watchmaker Publishing, but found the book still having typos. This is > rather frustrating, as they’ve had over a century and a half to get it right. > I suspect it has to do with digitization of the book and then publishing the > latest hard copy based on this poor digitization. After trying for a couple > years to get through it, I decided I couldn’t figure out if it was due to > typos that I don’t know are typos, or simply inability to comprehend on my > part, that has kept me from being able to interpret the work successfully. > > So what I’d like to know is if there are possibly any publications on Boole’s > work, hopefully in relation to Peirce’s early logical work extending the > Boolean calculus, that might assist me in finally getting through Boole’s > book. Any advice or suggestions in regard to this matter will be appreciated. > > Sincerely, > Franklin Ransom > Sent from my iPhone
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
