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Lewis Carroll as Logician*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

R. B. Braithwaite
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Extract

Whereas the works on Trigonometry, Geometry and Determinants were published over the name of Charles L. Dodgson, Student and Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church, Oxford, the two small works on Logic—The Game of Logic and Symbolic Logic, Part I — and the two interesting logical notes in Mind appeared over the signature of the creator of Alice. Thus on the theory of double personality which the Rev C. L. Dodgson tried so hard to establish (and so unsuccessfully, since his was a completely integrated though singular personality), the formal works on logic are to be classed with those informal ones which are the delight of the civilised world.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 16 , Issue 219 , July 1932 , pp. 174 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association

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Footnotes

*

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898.

References

page no 177 note * He was aware of their horror. “All Uncles make bad puns” is one of his syllogistic premisses. See also the reception of the King of Hearts’ pun in the Trial at the end of Alice in Wonderland.

page no 177 note † A digression on to two points of philosophical psychology. The analysis of the taste of Alice’s reducing bottle into “a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee and hot buttered toast” anticipated Zwaardemaker’s analysis of taste and Henning’s of smell (I doubt whether Alice could discriminate between these); and Bruno’s experiences with the Professor’s black light were very similar to James Ward’s. And a point in theoretical physics: entropy, which is alleged always to be greater yesterday and to-morrow than it is to-day, shares this property with the consumption of the White Queen’s jam.