‘Im Symbolen Denken’. Symbolic Knowledge in Frege´s Conceptual Notation

JAVIER LEGRIS

Methodisches Denken im Kontext

Mentis

Lugar: Paderborn; Año: 2008; p. 133 - 153

The aim of this paper is to use the notion of symbolic knowledge, formulated originally byG.W. Leibniz, as a key concept to understand some aspects of Frege’s conceptual notation (Begriffsschrift) and its place in the origins of mathematical logic in the 19thCentury. Furthermore, I hope to shed new light on the distinction between calculus and universal language, which played a decisive role in the historiography of mathematical logic. The paper will be focused on Frege’s book Begriffsschrift from 1879 and later articles, where Frege elucidates his conceptual notation and the logic built on it. Frege’s position seems to contradict some of the ideas underlying what I shall call the »tradition of symbolic knowledge« that were crucial in the development of mathematical logic. Symbolic knowledge can be roughly described as knowledge