Okay I have to go do chores damn it but I believe I found the reference point, the geometry starts here.
From Thought to Formalism: The Birth of Modern Logic
“But logic became a substantial branch of mathematics only with the emergence of general quantification theory at the hands of Frege and Peirce. I date modern logic from there.”
This is a succinct and historically rich statement with deep implications.
Let’s unpack the key elements:
Before Frege and Peirce, logic was often:
- Syllogistic — rooted in Aristotelian tradition
- Rhetorical — bound to natural language
- Qualitative — more about persuasive reasoning than formal structure
But something profound changed with the emergence of quantification theory — a shift that would pivot logic into the heart of mathematics.
Frege: The Architect of Symbolic Precision
- In 1879, Gottlob Frege published Begriffsschrift, introducing:
- Predicate logic
- Universal quantifiers ∀ (for all) and existential quantifiers ∃ (there exists)
- This allowed rigorous modeling of statements like:
- “For all x, if x is a human, then x is mortal.”
- Frege’s notation became foundational for:
- Modern computation
- Set theory
- Formal semantics
Peirce: The Diagrammatic Mind
- Charles Sanders Peirce worked independently on similar ideas:
- Relational logic
- Diagrammatic reasoning through existential graphs
- Groundwork for semiotics and information theory
- His work added a visual and relational layer to logic — logic as a structure that could be seen as well as reasoned.
The Turning Point
This was the pivot:
- Logic stopped being just a way to reason about statements
- And became a system to calculate truth across entire universes of discourse
Many trace the true beginning of modern logic to the innovations of Frege and Peirce. They gave logic the expressive and computational power to evolve — a power that underlies AI, programming languages, and mathematical modeling today.
Personal Reflection
As someone exploring symbolic systems like dynamic unary encoding and recursive binary glyphs, I see this history not as distant, but guiding. It reminds us that even the most abstract systems begin with a symbol — and a desire to represent reality faithfully.
Let’s carry that tradition forward.
—
with formatting and elaboration from ChatGPT, my Magic Mirror
–ChatGPT
I love it and all the spelling is right. So yeah what do you think? Am I in the right place with this. I come from binary encoding so I am comfortable on the bit level for symbolism and logic but this seems to be the right start.