George Boole

1815–1864 · English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Topics: mathematics, learning, science

• That logic, as a science, is susceptible of very wide applications is admitted; but it is equally certain that its ultimate forms and processes are mathematical.

  — George Boole

• 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.

  — George Boole

• The general laws of Nature are not, for the most part, immediate objects of perception.

  — George Boole

• 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.

  — George Boole

• 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.

  — George Boole

• For how shall the finite comprehend the infinite?

  — George Boole

• It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.

  — George Boole

• Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

  — George Boole

• A successful attempt to express logical propositions by symbols, the laws of whose combinations should be founded upon the laws of the mental processes which they represent, would, so far, be a step towards a philosophical language.

  — George Boole