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 queen victoria symbolic logic




From: nola@cats.ucsc.edu (Nola Van Vugt)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Dodgson/Queen Victoria UL
Date: 5 Jun 1994 21:18:38 GMT

From the FAQ:

F. Queen Victoria so loved Alice in Wonderland she requested copies of all

Lewis Carroll's books. Was ticked with copy of Symbolic Logic.

False, indeed, but you don't have the UL quite straight.

Just discovered a reference to this UL in my new, but still rather old, Fifth Edition of Symbolic Logic, Part I. Actually, what Dodgson, aka Carroll, is alleged to have sent her was a copy of The Condensation of Determinants. Which makes for a better story, IMO, since Carroll intended Symbolic Logic to be an introduction to logic for children. (From the Introduction: "In this First Part, I have carefully avoided all difficulties which seemed to me to be beyond the grasp of an intelligent child of (say) twelve or fourteen years of age.")

Dodgson's Debunkal, in the Second Edition of Symbolic Logic, reads:

"I take this opportunity of giving what publicity I can to my contradiction of a silly story [motto?], which has been going the round of the papers, about my having presented certain books to Her Majesty the Queen. It is so constantly repeated, and is such absolute fiction, that I think it worthwhile to state, once for all, that it is utterly false in every particular; nothing even resembling it has ever occurred."


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