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Borges was well-read and read English and international works extensively (in fact, English was his first language, not Spanish), so it's not completely unreaso
by lmkg 12y ago
Borges was well-read and read English and international works extensively (in fact, English was his first language, not Spanish), so it's not completely unreasonable that he kept abreast of new developments. It's still a stretch that he would know about some random court case in New York.
It's odd to me that you characterize Boole as a philosopher--I've always heard of him as a mathematician. His work on an algebraic formalization of logic is foundational to the modern field of logic, which was the primary area of mathematic research (along with set theory) for the first three or so decades of the 1900's. For example, the first chunk of Russel's Principia Mathematica defines a new logical algebra to be used going forward.
It seems you think that the use of boolean algebra was popularized because of Shanon's application of it to circuitry? Symbolic systems were well-used and well-known before that. For example, Goedel's theorems (1929, 1931) deal explicitly with the symbolic representation of logical statements. And I daresay that the Incompleteness Theorem is something that Borges would have been intensely interested in, since it deals with the finite accessibility of knowledge.
In short, Borges would have chosen Boole because, at that time, it would have been perfectly acceptable to see his work on logic as being similarly foundational to the field of mathematics as that of Descartes (geometry) and Leibniz (calculus).
- defen 12y agoGodel, Russel, etc didn't really build upon any of Boole's work, though, did they? Other than being influenced by the general idea of applying mathematics to logic. I guess I was wondering how much Boole's work was actually used; but I see your point about it being foundational in the same way Descartes and Leibniz were, even if we don't use their actual work these days. Random thought - why were truth tables not invented until 1921, 57 years after Boole's death (at least, that's what wikipedia tells me - Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)? Are they really that revolutionary of an idea? are they one of those ideas that is obvious in retrospect but required a genius to discover? Or was no one even really thinking about this until Wittgenstein, or what? Sorry if my thoughts seem disorganized, I'm just sort of writing down ideas as they come to me.
- eternauta3k 12y ago> in fact, English was his first language, not Spanish Where did you get this?
- lmkg 12y agoI've heard that in a couple of places, it's difficult to track down a specific source. It looks like that particular fact isn't on Wikipedia anymore, although it does say he learned English from a young age. Source for being raised bilingual "he was not even aware that English and Spanish were separate languages until later in his childhood" (cache) http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=borges+first+language&d=4982438270272501&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=VPucXg81ehXZwFW5FoFkC10Ivai-ERRB http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=borges+first+language&d=498... Source for English as first langue: http://kirjasto.sci.fi/jlborges.htm http://kirjasto.sci.fi/jlborges.htm "English practically as a first language" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/24/borges-had-a-genius-for-literature-but-not-love-or-much-else.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/24/borges-had-... Looks like the truth may be somewhat less strict than what I had remembered. Nonetheless, not only was he an Anglophone, he was also an Anglophile, something most of those sources reinforce.