‘Everybody makes errors’: The intersection of De Morgan's Logic and Probability, 1837 – 1847

Abstract

For Ivor Grattan-Guinness on the occasion of his retirement. The work of Augustus De Morgan on symbolic logic in the mid-nineteenth century is familiar to historians of logic and mathematics alike. What is less well known is his work on probability and, more specifically, the use of probabilistic ideas and methods in his logic. The majority of De Morgan's work on probability was undertaken around 1837 – 1838, with his earliest publications on logic appearing from 1839, a period which culminated with the publication of his Formal Logic in 1847. This article examines the overlap between his work on probability theory and logic during the earliest period of his interest in both.