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George Boole

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An Investigation of the Laws of Thought Paperback – June 1, 1958

by George Boole (Author)

94

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"A classic of pure mathematics and symbolic logic ... the publisher is to be thanked for making it available." — Scientific American
George Boole was on of the greatest mathematicians of the 19th century, and one of the most influential thinkers of all time. Not only did he make important contributions to differential equations and calculus of finite differences, he also was the discoverer of invariants, and the founder of modern symbolic logic. According to Bertrand Russell, "Pure mathematics was discovered by George Boole in his work published in 1854."
This work is the first extensive statement of the modern view that mathematics is a pure deductive science that can be applied to various situations. Boole first showed how classical logic could be treated with algebraic terminology and operations, and then proceeded to a general symbolic method of logical interference; he also attempted to devise a calculus of probabilities which could be applied to situations hitherto considered beyond investigation.
The enormous range of this work can be seen from chapter headings: Nature and Design of This Work; Signs and Their Laws; Derivation of Laws; Division of Propositions; Principles of Symbolical Reasoning; Interpretation; Elimination; Reduction; Methods of Abbreviation; Conditions of a Perfect Method; Secondary Propositions; Methods in Secondary Propositions; Clarke and Spinoza; Analysis, Aristotelian Logic; Theory of Probabilities; General Method in Probabilities; Elementary Illustrations; Statistical Conditions; Problems on Causes; Probability of Judgments; Constitution of the Intellect. This last chapter, Constitution of the Intellect, is a very significant analysis of the psychology of discovery and scientific method.

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Dover Publications
Publication date

June 1, 1958
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0486600289
ISBN-13

978-0486600284
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dover Publications (June 1, 1958)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0486600289
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0486600284
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,129,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #981 in Mathematical Logic
- #1,313 in Mathematics History
- #3,814 in Probability & Statistics (Books)

Customer Reviews:
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4.3 out of 5

94 global ratings

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Steven Stucky

Excellent print for what it is.

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2023

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Usually, I'm sceptical about buying these older books because the reprint quality is terrible, and sometimes, bad enough to return. This book is one I'll recommend: it's print quality is great, it's the book I was hoping to receive, and it is actually new. The only stipulation is the amount of time it takes to get it. I waited a month, but again, the quality of this reprint is worth the wait. Good luck!

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Leo Depuydt (Consignment)

Why does everyone talk about Boole without understanding

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2019

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Boole is the twin of Sir Isaac Newton. Just as Newton discovered the laws that govern the physical universe, Boole outlined (for the most part) the laws that govern rational human intelligence in the brain, the most complex structure in the universe. His work is worth not one bur two Nobel prizes. None of the other reviews I read below or above exhibit even the slightest understanding of what Boole was about. What is wrong with the intellectual history of the West? Leo Depuydt (Brown University)

6 people found this helpful

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Jack Cline

great insights into George Boole's mind

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2017

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As a database programmer who relies heavily on Boolean logic I much appreciated a look behind the curtains of George Boole's impressive work.

3 people found this helpful

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Henry Jackson

Acceptable but could be better.

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2017

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Although I was able to get an overall idea of Boole's ideas, the book was deficient in its structure. It had typos, misplaced sentences and paragraphs which got me lost sometimes.

3 people found this helpful

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Guy F.

numbers

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2016

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Great book, dense and not for the light reader. Good reproduction and if you love math and philosophy...

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Jared Clark

the reader can easily follow the line of thought

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2014

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Verbose, but not difficult, because the Author is invested in the subject-matter and well-expressed, the reader can easily follow the line of thought. Proper philosophy, I feel, about Logic.

3 people found this helpful

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Paul Sullivan

science

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2019

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good for the intent... good for tech

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Victor Dzundza

Awesome quality of book

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2014

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Thanks very much. Book is very neat and clean. George Boole is genius of logic(after Frege, Aristotle and Russell) .

One person found this helpful

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Cliente Kindle

Bom.

Reviewed in Brazil on October 11, 2022

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Boa leitura e rápida.

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Dr. SAGODIRA Phd Philosophy

L'avènement de la logique binaire.

Reviewed in France on June 3, 2019

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Un ouvrage clé pour comprendre la trajectoire numérique à ses débuts.
Je le recommande aux enseignants qui ont une approche épistémologique de leurs enseignements.

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Dola Devanandam

Four Stars

Reviewed in India on April 24, 2015

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The book is not Recevied

One person found this helpful

antonio

Pessima digitalizzazione.

Reviewed in Italy on November 15, 2014

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Pur essendo il prezzo davvero irrilevante il testo è quasi inutilizzabile. Fa torto alla qualità, in genere soddisfacente, dei testi Kindle.
Sarebbe opportuno toglierlo dal catalogo ed eventualmente segnalare la disponibilità di edizioni elettroniche decisamente migliori. Almeno una, e per altro gratuita, è quella del Gutenberg Project.

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W. Swales

FORMIDABLE! Just purchase this MUST READ book and be in awe!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2014

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FORGET computers as we currently know them – THIS is the FUTURE! A MUST read for ALL hardware and software designers.

In this extraordinary deeply fascinating and INSIGHTFUL masterwork, written in 1853, George Boole throws away the CLASSICAL logic of Aristotle as he discerns just EIGHT STATES OF THE MIND which he determines as ‘8 PROPOSITIONS’ that can ALL be expressed MATHEMATICALLY as either ‘affirmative’ or ‘negative’.

The propositions are as follows:

UNIVERSAL

All ‘A’s are ‘B’s All new cakes are nice (AND)
All ‘A’s are not ‘B’s All new cakes are not nice (NAND)
No ‘A’s are ‘B’s No new cakes are nice (NOT)
No ‘A’s are not ‘B’s No new cakes are not nice

PARTICULAR

Some ‘A’s are ‘B’s Some cats are lions (XOR)
Some ‘A’s are not ‘B’s Some new cakes are not nice (NOR)
Some not ‘A’s are ‘B’s Some not cakes are biscuits
Not all ‘A’s are ‘B’s Not all cats are tigers

Using his eight ‘propositions’, Boole – ever modest throughout - presents the pathway to ‘TURIN COMPLETE’ machines that are not only PROGRAMMABLE to become (say) a spreadsheet one moment; an intuitive interactive game in the next; and a global social media communication platform in the next instant – a massive achievement in itself – but whose chipset is TOTALLY RECONFIGURABLE to become a DIFFERENT MACHINE entirely.

To grasp this VERY powerful concept and the deep ramifications this approach will have on society, this is akin to having a MECHANICAL machine that is a TELEVISION one minute, a WASHING MACHINE in the next minute, and a COOKER in the next.

Should you wish to examine the SEEDS of ALL logic as we know it, then THIS book is a MUST READ!

With a few notable exceptions, practically ALL computers in existence today are ‘FINITE STATE’ machines. That is to say that the Central Processing Unit (CPU) – the ‘brain’ of the computer – is configured to carry out a set of ‘instructions’ - such as manipulating data or moving data from A to B – that are FIXED – a word that here means RIGID and UNCHANGEABLE.

Turing-completeness does NOT apply to languages such as ‘C’, ADA, BASIC; Pascal; Fortran; HTML, XML, SQL, and so on, or the CPU PLATFORMS that they utilise to carry out their ‘instructions’, because they merely represent STRUCTURED DATA MANIPULATION and they do not describe COMPUTATION.

The ‘mind states’ ‘AND’; ‘OR’; ‘XOR’; and ‘NOT’ – as used in FINITE STATE digital computers – are only SCRATCHING THE SURFACE dear reader. To achieve ‘TRUE’ COMPUTATIONAL states requires us to abandon computers AS WE CURRENTLY KNOW THEM and make a shift to ANALOGUE computers.

What THIS masterwork reveals is the pathway to creating machines that AUTOMATICALLY CHANGE their configurations to become BETTER at what they do through a process of ‘NATURAL SELECTION’; RECOMBINATION; and MUTATION.

All of this is achieved by introducing a very powerful ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) concept called ‘don’t care’ – and it is THIS authoritative and all commanding concept that compels the machine to AUTOMATICALLY RECONFIGURE ITSELF so as to find – not the OPTIMAL solution to a problem – as humans do when we create OPTIMISED software and hardware so as to SAVE TIME examining EVERY feasible configuration – but the BEST solution to a problem based upon its ‘fitness of purpose’.

There are a multitude of problems that are ONLY solvable using TURING-COMPLETE machines! This is because languages and systems bound with FINITE looping capabilities CANNOT solve complex problems because all COMPUTABLE FUNCTIONS are NOT COMPUTABLE on that platform or in that language.

This is akin to comparing the intellect of (say) a RAT brain processing power to the intellect of a human beings brain processing power – whilst rats can ‘think outside of the box’, humans do not have a ‘box’ to ‘think outside of’ and as a result we are capable of making massive insights into things and come up with substance that changes the very SOCIETY that we live in FOREVER – CARS; RADIO devices; and COMPUTERS being prime examples.

When you read and digest Boole’s formidable expositions, be prepared to be shocked – Boole was heralding in the birth of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) MACHINE!

The VERY FIRST computer – a machine called COLOSSUS designed and built by TOMMY FLOWERS – a machine that was both programmable AND CONFIGURABLE – was used at Bletchley Park by MI5 to help crack Hitler’s ‘uncrackable’ high-command Geheimschreiber – a word that means secret writer (we are NOT talking about ‘Enigma’ – which Gordon Welchman and Alan Turin cracked – we are talking about the LORENZ CIPHER used by Hitler – which was ‘cracked’ by Alan Turing and Bill Tutte – the man who worked out the logical structure of Tunny)!

Britain didn’t just invent the ‘programmable computer’ – we ACTUALLY invented the worlds FIRST ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE machine.

THIS formidable machine of awesome beauty was a GAME CHANGER that helped to provide Britain with intelligence that enabled Britain and her allies to take swift decisive action to scupper a terrifying unstoppable foe.

Once you read Boole’s astounding book and examine the SEEDS of all of this wonderment, should you desire to have insight into the POTENCY of the beautiful awesome beast that is Colossus, then obtain a copy of ‘Colossus – Bletchley Parks greatest secret’ by Paul Gannon (available from Amazon). What this machine could (can?) DO will blow you away!

Should you wish to take a philosophical ‘trip’ into what happens when a ‘fault’ develops WITHIN THE MACHINE ITSELF (a bit like having a stroke), then watch Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi ‘slow burn’ film ‘2001 – a space odyssey’ (available from Amazon on BluRay) and watch what happens when ‘HAL’ malfunctions and is unable to distinguish ‘right from wrong’ – with DEVASTATING results.

Have fun – and come away ENLIGHTENED!

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