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 chapter three George Boole and the Genesis of Symbolic Logic George Boole had a revelation at the age of seventeen that changed both his life and the course of Western philosophy. He spoke in spiritual and mystical terms about the insight gained in this epiphany, which forever separated modern logic from the logic of Aristotle and the Scholastics. The mind, Boole discovered, has an innate sense of “Unity” that it constantly uses to synthesize its understanding of the world. Our natural propensity is not to see objects individually—as utterly distinct things—but rather in relationship to a greater, all-encompassing whole. In the mathematical terms most germane to the young Boole, there appeared to be something special about the number 1. Using that number to represent the “Universe of Thought” and variables to represent subsets within the whole, Boole eventually fashioned a new science of logic out of the symbols and processes of mathematics .1 This mathematical logic, he strongly believed, could more effectively present and manipulate propositions, categories, and relationships than the overly wordy traditional system of logic. Despite the transference of his emotional insight into the mechanics of reasoning, Boole never forgot that the notion of a mathematical logic came in the form of what he regarded as a divine manifestation, and he hoped to return the favor by applying his new logic to the advantage of religious belief . “The hope of his heart,” his wife Mary would later recall, had been “to work in the cause of true religion.” She continued, “Mathematics had never had more than a secondary interest for him; and even logic he cared for chiefly as a means of clearing the ground of doctrines imagined to be proved, by showing that the evidence on which they were supposed to rest had no tendency to prove them. But he had been endeavouring to give a more active and positive help than this to the cause of what he deemed pure religion.”2 The “father of pure mathematics,” as Bertrand Russell would 77 later refer to Boole, had not been purely interested in mathematics, nor was his mathematics free of the “impurities” of extradisciplinary concerns, in particular, religious ones.3 The symbolic logic that is now an essential tool for secular philosophers and that forms the basis for dispassionate computers began in the mind of a warm-blooded, religiously concerned idealist. In communications with his friends and former pupils, Boole spoke about the broader intent of his life’s work more candidly than in his articles and books. In a telling 1840 letter, for instance, he wrote of the workings of the mind in relation to greater truths about the universe, and envisioned the study of thought in a manifestly religious way: “The ideas of human immortality , of modes of being infinitely diversified and bearing no relation to our existing senses in the present life of unlimited advancement and continued development, these . . . [are] among the glorious possibilities of the science of mind. And I hence am inclined to believe that the study of mental philosophy and the trains of reflection to which it naturally leads are favourable both to the growth of genuine poetry and the reception and appreciation of religious truth.”4 Just as William Paley and other natural theologians sought to bolster religion through the examination of nature, so Boole proclaimed that a sustained investigation of the mind would lead us to central religious tenets such as the immortality of the soul and the existence of a divine realm unavailable to our senses. Like the ingenious structure of the human eye or the perfect geometry of the nautilus shell, elements in our consciousness, such as the innate notion of “Unity,” present compelling clues to the divine and beneficent construction of the universe. The human mind is no less of a miracle than the body, Boole conceived, its resplendence pointing to its creation by a higher power. In short, a turn inward would point us toward the external reality of God. To understand the genesis of symbolic logic, therefore, it is necessary to understand the role of such nonlogical notions at work in George Boole’s thought. The influence of certain philosophers and theologians is certainly an important part of the story. For instance, Boole was fluent in German and had read the works of Kant with more than a passing interest.5 Yet just as important to the origin of Boole’s new mathematical system are...

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