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Hugh MacColl and Christine Ladd-Franklin: 1877–1909

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Universal Logic, Ethics, and Truth

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Abstract

An outsider in the logic community, Hugh MacColl (1837–1909), achieved recognition of his work in logic belatedly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Together with George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, William Stanley Jevons, Charles S. Peirce, Ernst Schröder, John Venn, Christine Ladd-Franklin and others, MacColl considered logic as a calculus represented by the algebra of logic. In an article published in 1889 in The American Journal of Psychology, Ladd-Franklin wrote, “Nothing is stranger, in the recent history of Logic in England, than the non-recognition, which has befallen the writings of this author….it seems incredible that English logicians should not have seen that the entire task accomplished by Boole has been accomplished by Maccoll [sic.] with far greater conciseness, simplicity and elegance.” Examining some of her work and the work of her contemporaries, I explore the possible reasons she had for holding this opinion.

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Acknowledgments

In my talk on Ladd-Franklin for the July 2021 conference of the joint session of the British Society for the History of Mathematics and the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics, I have included discussions of Ladd-Franklin’s 1883 and 1889 papers but with entirely different emphases.

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  1. Departments of Mathematics and of Computer Science, Kean University, Union, NJ, USA

    Francine F. Abeles

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  1. Francine F. Abeles
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Correspondence to Francine F. Abeles .

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  1. St. John Fisher University, Philosophy, Rochester, NY, USA

    Timothy J. Madigan

  2. Departement of Philosophy, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Jean-Yves Béziau

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Abeles, F.F. (2024). Hugh MacColl and Christine Ladd-Franklin: 1877–1909. In: Madigan, T.J., Béziau, JY. (eds) Universal Logic, Ethics, and Truth. Studies in Universal Logic. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44461-6_2

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