The Mathematical Analysis of Logic Being an Essay Towards a Calculus of Deductive Reasoning (English Edition)

In presenting this Work to public notice, I deem it not irrelevant to ob-serve, that speculations similar to those which it records have, at different periods, occupied my thoughts. In the spring of the present year my atten-tion was directed to the question then moved between Sir W. Hamilton and Professor De Morgan; and I was induced by the interest which it inspired, to resume the almost-forgotten thread of former inquiries. It appeared to me that, although Logic might be viewed with reference to the idea of quantity,it had also another and a deeper system of relations. If it was lawful to regard it from without, as connecting itself through the medium of Number with the intuitions of Space and Time, it was lawful also to regard it from within, as based upon facts of another order which have their abode in the constitution of the Mind. The results of this view, and of the inquiries which it suggested, are embodied in the following Treatise. It is not generally permitted to an Author to prescribe the mode in which his production shall be judged; but there are two conditions which I may venture to require of those who shall undertake to estimate the merits of this performance. The first is, that no preconceived notion of the impossibility of its objects shall be permitted to interfere with that candour and impartiality which the investigation of Truth demands; the second is, that their judgment of the system as a whole shall not be founded either upon the examination of only a part of it, or upon the measure of its conformity with any received system, considered as a standard of reference from which appeal is denied. It is in the general theorems which occupy the latter chapters of this work,|results to which there is no existing counterpart,|that the claims of the method, as a Calculus of Deductive Reasoning, are most fully set forth.