[FOM] Frege and logic

Alasdair Urquhart urquhart at cs.toronto.edu
Thu Oct 16 20:28:04 EDT 2003


Just a brief addendum to my earlier
short note in reply to William Ewald.
Hilary Putnam in his article "Peirce the
Logician" gives a very fair and even-handed
appraisal of the influence of Frege and
Peirce on Whitehead and Russell.  

>From my knowledge of the genesis of
Principia Mathematica, I think the appraisal
is accurate.  The essay is in "Realism
with a Human Face" and I strongly recommend
it to those interested in the question
of the development of modern quantification
theory.

Putnam says: "Frege did "discover" the quantifier
in the sense of having the rightful claim to
priority; but Peirce and his students discovered
it in the effective sense."  




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