5 Quotes & Sayings By George Boole

George William Charles Boole was an English mathematician, logician, philosopher, educator and author. He was born in Lincoln on 15th October 1815, the youngest of eight children. He was educated at Lincoln Grammar School and then at Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1838; M.A., 1840). He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1839 and became a tutor there in 1842. He left Cambridge in 1843 to teach at Hodder Place School, Warwickshire (1843-1847), where his pupils included Arthur Cayley (1841-1843) and Francis Jeans (1848-1853). He held the See of Cloyne from 1848 until his death in Cloyne on 1st April 1868.

1
A distinguished writer [Siméon Denis Poisson] has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the science:' The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.'' The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible' (equally like to happen). From these definitions it follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptation, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information which we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it, will vary. Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities. George Boole
2
There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, .. the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its solution must be obtained. By the labours of LaGrange, the motions of a disturbed planet are reduced with all their complication and variety to a purely mathematical question. It then ceases to be a physical problem; the disturbed and disturbing planet are alike vanished: the ideas of time and force are at an end; the very elements of the orbit have disappeared, or only exist as arbitrary characters in a mathematical formula. . George Boole
3
Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities. George Boole
4
To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind. George Boole