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Introduction

Frege, then a 30-year-old lecturer in Jena, published this booklet of under a hundred pages in Halle in 1879. Its subtitle calls it a formula language of pure thought modelled on that of arithmetic. Instead of the traditional analysis into subject and predicate, it analyses sentences into function and argument, introduces a sign for generality – the quantifier – and writes conditionals and negation in a two-dimensional notation of strokes. On this basis Frege sets out the first fully formal system of quantificational logic, and in the third part defines what it means for one item to follow another in a series. Reviewers found the notation cumbersome; its importance was recognised only decades later, largely through Russell.

Connections

Criticizes

• Organonc. 350 BCE · Aristotle

Taken up in

• On Sense and Reference1892 · Gottlob Frege
• Principia Mathematica1910 · Bertrand Russell
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus1921 · Ludwig Wittgenstein

More works by Gottlob Frege

• 1884The Foundations of Arithmetic
• 1892On Sense and Reference

Appears in

• Journey ‘The Linguistic Turn’ · Stop 1 of 10