The principles of science : $b a treatise on logic and scientific methodJevons, William Stanley
Philosophy
The principles of science : $b a treatise on logic and scientific method
Jevons, William Stanley
Logic; Science -- Methodology
It is a strange and discouraging fact, that true views of logic should
have been discovered and discussed from one to two centuries ago, and
yet should have remained, like George Bentham’s work in this century,
without influence on the subsequent progress of the science. It may be
regarded as certain that none of the discoverers of the quantification
of the predicate, Bentham, Hamilton, Thomson, De Morgan, and Boole,
were in any way assisted by the hints of the principle contained in
previous writers. As to my own views of logic, they were originally
moulded by a careful study of Boole’s works, as fully stated in my
first logical essay.[11] As to the process of substitution, it was
not learnt from any work on logic, but is simply the process of
substitution perfectly familiar to mathematicians, and with which I
necessarily became familiar in the course of my long-continued study of
mathematics under the late Professor De Morgan.
[11] *Pure Logic, or the Logic of Quality apart from Quantity;
with Remarks on Boole’s System, and on the Relation of Logic and
Mathematics.* London, 1864, p. 3.
I find that the Theory of Number, which I explained in the eighth
chapter of this work, is also partially anticipated in a single
scholium of Leibnitz. He first gives as an axiom the now well-known law
of Boole, as follows:--
“Axioma I. Si idem secum ipso sumatur, nihil constituitur novum, seu
*A* + *A* ∝ *A*.” Then follows this remarkable scholium: “Equidem in
numeris 4 + 4 facit 8, seu bini nummi binis additi faciunt quatuor
nummos, sed tunc bini additi sunt alii a prioribus; si iidem essent
nihil novi prodiret et perinde esset ac si joco ex tribus ovis facere
vellemus sex numerando, primum 3 ova, deinde uno sublato residua 2, ac
denique uno rursus sublato residuum.”
Translated this would read as follows:--
“Axiom I. If the same thing is taken together with itself, nothing new
arises, or *A* + *A* = *A*.
“Scholium. In numbers, indeed, 4 + 4 makes 8, or two coins added to two
coins make four coins, but then the two added are different from the
former ones; if they were the same nothing new would be produced, and
it would be just as if we tried in joke to make six eggs out of three,
by counting firstly the three eggs, then, one being removed, counting
the remaining two, and lastly, one being again removed, counting the
remaining egg.”
Compare the above with pp. 156 to 162 of the present work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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