1881 John Venn's Negative Reaction To W. Stanley Jevons's Logical Machine of 1870
In early 1870 W. Stanley Jevons presented a "Logical Machine" (Jevons 1880:200) for analyzing a syllogism or other logical form e.g. an argument reduced to a Boolean equation. By means of what Couturat (1914) called a "sort of logical piano ... the equalities which represent the premises ... are "played" on a keyboard like that of a typewriter. ... When all the premises have been "played", the panel shows only those constituents whose sum is equal to 1, that is, ... its logical whole. This mechanical method has the advantage over VENN's geometrical method..." (Couturat 1914:75).
For his part John Venn, a logician contemporary to Jevons, was less than thrilled, opining that "it does not seem to me that any contrivances at present known or likely to be discovered really deserve the name of logical machines" (italics added, Venn 1881:120). But of historical use to the developing notion of "algorithm" is his explanation for his negative reaction with respect to a machine that "may subserve a really valuable purpose by enabling us to avoid otherwise inevitable labor":
- (1) "There is, first, the statement of our data in accurate logical language",
- (2) "Then secondly, we have to throw these statements into a form fit for the engine to work with -- in this case the reduction of each proposition to its elementary denials",
- (3) "Thirdly, there is the combination or further treatment of our premises after such reduction,"
- (4) "Finally, the results have to be interpreted or read off. This last generally gives rise to much opening for skill and sagacity."
He concludes that "I cannot see that any machine can hope to help us except in the third of these steps; so that it seems very doubtful whether any thing of this sort really deserves the name of a logical engine."(Venn 1881:119-121).
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