Works
He is known for three main accomplishments:
- During 1877-79, while working out a problem involving integration, he published a four-part article establishing the first known variant of the propositional calculus, terming it the "calculus of equivalent statements", preceding Gottlob Frege's Begriffschrifft. He subsequently published 11 articles in Mind magazine, 1880..1908, and a text, in an effort to attract the attention of philosophers to his work.
- Clarence Irving Lewis credited MacColl's late work on the nature of implication as the source of the basic ideas of Lewis's innovative work in modal logic.
- MacColl's work represents one of the first treatments of logical pluralism where he explores the possibilities of modal logic, logic of fiction, connexive logic, many-valued logic and probability logic.
MacColl also published two novels, Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889), concerning a journey to Mars and a utopian Martian society, and Ednor Whitlock (1891), dealing with a crisis of faith occasioned by exposure to new scientific ideas. While described by a recent critic as "best left unread", the novels reveal social and moral values to which the author gave full expression in his 1909 publication Man's Origin, Destiny, and Duty, an apology for Christianity.
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