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Title: Boole-De Morgan Correspondence, 1842-64 by G. C. Smith, Ali Smith, George Boole ISBN: 0-19-853183-4 Publisher: Clarendon Pr Pub. Date: December, 1989 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Correspondence Without Communication.
Comment: The title of this review is taken from a 1986 essay in the journal HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC about this fascinating book. Boole and De Morgan were two brilliant, objective, and dedicated mathematician-philosophers struggling at the same time to modernize logic. They had a strange relationship. In 1847 after working independently, each published what was to become a landmark book on formal logic, astoundingly on the very same day. De Morgan had already discovered the crucial concept "universe of discourse" before Boole did any work on logic. But it was Boole who coined its name after learning it from De Morgan. The concept was absent from Boole's 1847 work , but it fit perfectly into Boole's thinking and it came to play a prominent role in his more famous 1854 book. Without this interaction, the history of logic may have been very different. Aside from this one point neither understood much of what the other was thinking. They had an extensive correspondence (published here for the first time), which began in 1842 although "universe of discourse" is not mentioned until 1861(page 89 in this book). But despite heroic and honest efforts they hardly communicated. Both had radical and radically different approaches to revamping logic. Perhaps each had such a tenuous grip on his own new ideas that neither could understand the other without risking losing everything. For those who know a little logic and have read the 1847 and 1854 works by the two men this book could be an eye-opening experience. My feeling is that in the right hands this book could prove to be a crucial data point for theories of the growth of scientific thought.