George Boole Quotes on Mind
George Boole, the largely self-taught founder of mathematical logic, set out to show that the operations of the mind themselves obey discoverable laws, and the quotes gathered here present that project. The aim of his great book, as he stated it, was to deduce the laws of the symbols of logic from a consideration of those operations of the mind which are implied in the strict use of language as an instrument of reasoning. Boole found a deep correspondence between thinking and calculation, holding that there is an exact agreement in the laws by which general reasoning and algebra are conducted. He even derived the logical principle of contradiction from a fundamental law of thought expressed as an algebraic equation. Drawn from An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, these passages present the reasoning mind as governed by laws as exact as those of mathematics.
Quotes
-
Attributed to George Boole:
“The laws of thought are the laws of mathematics.”
-
Attributed to George Boole:
“Truth is the agreement of thought with itself.”
-
“To deduce the laws of the symbols of Logic from a consideration of those operations of the mind which are implied in the strict use of language as an instrument of reasoning.”
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought(1854) | p. 42 -
“Of the many forms of false culture, a premature converse with abstractions is perhaps the most likely to prove fatal to the growth of a masculine vigour of intellect.”
A treatise on differential equations(1859) | p. vi; cited in: Quotations by George Boole , MacTutor History of Mathematics, August 2010. -
“That axiom of Metaphysicians which is termed the principle of contradiction and which affirms that it is impossible for anything to possess a quality, and in the same time not to possess it, is a consequence of the fundamental law of thought, whose expression is x²=x.”
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought(1854) | p. 49: as cited in: " Professor Boole's Mathematical theory " in: Henry Longueville Manse, Philosophical pamphlets, (1853), p. 6 -
“There is not only a close analogy between the operations of the mind in general reasoning and its operations in the particular science of Algebra, but there is to a considerable extent an exact agreement in the laws by which the two classes of operations are conducted.”
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought(1854) | p. 6; As cited in: Leandro N. De Castro, Fernando J. Von Zuben, Recent Developments in Biologically Inspired Computing, Idea Group Inc (IGI), 2005 p. 236