Ebook: On the Algebra in Boole’s Laws of Thought

This article explores the ideas that went into George Boole’s development of an algebra for logic in his book The Laws of Thought. The many theories that have been proposed to explain the origins of his algebra have ignored his wife Mary Boole’s claim that he was deeply influenced by Indian logic. This paper investigates this claim and argues that Boole’s focus was more than a framework for propositions and that he was trying to mathematize cognitions as is assumed in Indian logic and to achieve this he believed an algebraic approach was the most reasonable. By exploring parallels between his work and Indian logic, we are able to explain
several peculiarities of his algebraic system.