He says: over the course of the century that followed, a few progressively simpler forms of it were found and But in the context of George Boole, one can say

He says: over the course of the century that followed, a few progressively simpler forms of it were found and But in the context of George Boole, one can say that it’s a minimal version of his big idea Since this is an aside, he doesn't cover it in depth. However, he is clearly saying (1) that his claim is a derivative of Boole's idea, and (2) that lots of other people made simplifications before he did. This doesn't sound to me like "implicitly or explicitly taking credit for results he wasn't the first person to discover". And the last time I saw such a claim on HN, it was clearly wrong. In passing, my own favorite simplification is G Spencer Brown's Laws of Form, which has mostly been forgotten now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form