English mathematician George Boole (1815–1864) is considered a principal inventor of mathematical logic and a major predecessor of computer science. Historians typically emphasize his recasting Aristotelian logic in algebraic notation and applying the computational techniques of mathematical analysis to the laws governing deduction. By emphasizing Boole’s place on the trajectory from ancient to modern logic, however, such a narrative reduces his project to its novel theoretical claims and obscures its practical, moral stakes. In practice, implementing his system meant translating life’s concepts into algebraic symbols. The fragmentary pedagogical materials preserved in Boole’s personal archive exhibit a system oriented toward concrete matters of moral and theological concern. Boole entwined exposition with a parade of practical applications, analyzing such constructs as God’s chief end in creation and the Jewish legal definition of clean beasts. Though he insisted his appropriation of mathematical symbols was not theoretically necessary, this choice allowed him to harness the existing computational expertise of numerate readers. Faced with the often complex definitions of the objects populating heaven and earth, mathematical logic provided a new way to write them down, a symbolic language that a properly trained reader already knew how to manipulate. Boole’s efforts toward a textbook display a conviction that readers would find theological applications an especially interesting and intelligible manifestation of his logic. The assumptions underlying his notions of practicality and accessibility reveal an epistemic context in which logic constituted an arena for working out the still unsettled relationship between theological tradition and modern mathematical science.
