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The Origins of Cyberspace collection described as lots 1-255 will first be offered as a single lot, subject to a reserve price. If this price is not reached, the collection will be immediately offered as individual lots as described in the catalogue as lots 1-255.
BOOLE, George. An investigation of the laws of thought, on which are founded the mathematical theories of logic and probabilities. London: Walton and Maberly and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co, 1854.
Details
BOOLE, George. An investigation of the laws of thought, on which are founded the mathematical theories of logic and probabilities. London: Walton and Maberly and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co, 1854.
8o. Original black blind-paneled cloth, rebacked in morocco. Preserved in a cloth drop-back box.
FIRST EDITION, probable first issue. Boole invented the first practical system of logic in algebraic form, which enabled more advances in logic to be made in the decades of the nineteenth century than in the twenty-two centuries preceding. Boole's work led to the creation of set theory and probability theory in mathematics, to the philosophical work of Peirce, Russell, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein, and to computer technology via the master's thesis of Claude Shannon who recognized that the true/false values in Boole's two-valued logic were analogous to the open and closed states of electric circuits.
"Since Boole showed that logics can be reduced to very simple algebraic systems -- known today as Boolean Algebras -- it was possible for Babbage and his successors to design organs for a computer that could perform the necessary logical tasks. Thus our debt to this simple, quiet man, George Boole, is extraordinarily great ... His remark about a 'special law to which the symbols of quantity are not subject' is very important: this law in effect is that2 = for every in his system. Now in numerical terms this equation or law has as its only solution 0 and 1. This is why the binary system plays so vital a role in modern computers: their logical parts are in effect carrying out binary operations. " (Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann [1972] 37-38). OOC 224.
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FIRST EDITION, probable first issue. Boole invented the first practical system of logic in algebraic form, which enabled more advances in logic to be made in the decades of the nineteenth century than in the twenty-two centuries preceding. Boole's work led to the creation of set theory and probability theory in mathematics, to the philosophical work of Peirce, Russell, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein, and to computer technology via the master's thesis of Claude Shannon who recognized that the true/false values in Boole's two-valued logic were analogous to the open and closed states of electric circuits.
"Since Boole showed that logics can be reduced to very simple algebraic systems -- known today as Boolean Algebras -- it was possible for Babbage and his successors to design organs for a computer that could perform the necessary logical tasks. Thus our debt to this simple, quiet man, George Boole, is extraordinarily great ... His remark about a 'special law to which the symbols of quantity are not subject' is very important: this law in effect is that
Further details
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