William Ewald

University of Pennsylvania

"The Emergence of Quantification Theory, 1879-1940"

Abstract:

As is well known, Frege in 1879 produced the first systematic presentation of quantificational logic. In the 1940s, Quine declared that Frege's introduction of the quantifier-variable notation was the fundamental advance separating the new logic from the old; this view has now become standard. But the matter did not seem so straightforward to Frege and his contemporaries; I shall argue that the modern appreciation of the importance of the quantifiers was in fact the result of a prolonged and arduous process, and not something Frege was in a position to accomplish on his own.

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