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HOW PEIRCEAN WAS THE “‘FREGEAN’ REVOLUTION” IN LOGIC? 20<br />

of Logic”, and more fully articulated and perfected, to have not only a first-, but also a second-order, quantificational<br />

theory, in Peirce’s [1885] “On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation”. Peirce himself<br />

was dissatisfied with Boole’s—and others’—efforts to deal with quantifiers “some” and “all”, declaring in “On the<br />

Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation” [Peirce 1885, 194] that, until he and Mitchell devised<br />

their notation in 1883, no one was able to properly handle quantifiers, that: All attempts to introduce this distinction<br />

into the Boolian algebra were more or less complete failures until Mr. Mitchell showed how it was to be effected.”<br />

But, even more importantly, that Peirce’s system dominated logic in the final two decades of the 19 th century<br />

and first two decades of the 20 th . Piece’s system dominated logic in the final decades of the nineteenth century and first<br />

two decades of the twentieth, largely through the efforts of Schröder, in particular in his magnum opus, Vorlesungen<br />

über die Algebra der Logik [1890-1905], whereas Frege’s work exerted scant influence, 24 and that largely negative,<br />

until brought to the attention of the wider community by Russell, beginning with his Principles of Mathematics of<br />

1903 [Russell 1903], largely through the introduction of, and efforts to circumvent or solve the Russell paradox. Thus,<br />

by 1885, Peirce had not only a fully developed first-order theory, which he called the icon of the second intention, but<br />

a good beginning at a second-order theory, as found in his “On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy<br />

of Notation” [Peirce 1885].<br />

By 1885, Peirce not only had a fully developed first-order theory, which he called the icon of the second intention,<br />

but a good beginning at a second-order theory. Our source here is Peirce’s [1885] “On the Algebra of Logic: A<br />

Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation”. In “Second Intentional Logic” of 1893 (see [Peirce 1933b, 4.56–58),<br />

Peirce even presented a fully developed second-order theory.<br />

The final version of Peirce’s first-order theory uses indices for enumerating and distinguishing the objects considered<br />

in the Boolean part of an equation as well as indices for quantifiers, a concept taken from Mitchell.<br />

Peirce introduced indexed quantifiers in “The Logic of Relatives” [Peirce 1883b, 189]. He denoted the existential<br />

and universal quantifiers by ‘�i’ and ‘�i’ respectively, as logical sums and products, and individual variables, i, j,<br />

…, are assigned both to quantifiers and predicates. He then wrote ‘li,j’ for ‘i is the lover of j’. Then “Everybody loves<br />

somebody” is written in Peirce’s quantified logic of relatives as �i �j li,j, i.e. as “Everybody is the lover of somebody”.<br />

In Peirce’s own exact expression, as found in his “On the Logic of Relatives” [1883b, 200]), we have: “�i �j li,j > 0<br />

means that everything is a lover of something.” Peirce’s introduction of indexed quantifier in fact establishes Peirce’s<br />

quantification theory as a many-sorted logic.<br />

That is, Peirce defined the existential and universal quantifiers, in his mature work, by ‘�i’ and ‘�i’ respectively,<br />

as logical sums and products, e.g., �ixi���xi���xj���xk���…��and �ixi ��xi ��xj���xk, and individual variables, i, j, …, are<br />

assigned both to quantifiers and predicates. (In the Peano-Russell notation, these are (�x)F(x) = F(xi) � F(xj) � F(xk)<br />

and are (�x)F(x) = F(xi) � F(xj) � F(xk) respectively.)<br />

The difference between the Peirce-Mitchell-Schröder formulation, then, of quantified propositions, is purely<br />

cosmetic, and both are significantly notationally simpler than Frege’s. Frege’s rendition of the proposition “For all x, if<br />

x is F, then x is G”, i.e. (�x)[F(x) � G(x)], for example, is<br />

a G(a)<br />

and, in the Peirce-Mitchell-Schröder notation could be formulated as �i (fi ―< gi), while “There exists an x such that x<br />

is f and x is G, in the familiar Peano-Russell notation is formulated as (�x)[F(x) � G(x)], and �i (fi ―< gi) in the Peirce-<br />

Mitchell-Schröder notation, is rendered as<br />

F(a)<br />

a G(a)<br />

in Frege’s notation, that is ~(�x)~[F(x) � G(x)].<br />

Not only that; recently, Calixto Badesa [1991; 2004], Geraldine Brady [2000] (see also [Anellis 2004b]) in detail,<br />

and Enrique Casanovas [2000] briefly and emphasizing more recent developments, traced the development of the<br />

origins of the special branches of modern mathematical logic known as model theory, 25 which is concerned with the<br />

F(a)

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