Boole and the Universe of Thought

The protagonist of the chapter is George Boole, who played a fundamental role in both the development of the idea of discourse, the description of which fills most of the chapter, and the logic underlying the functioning of digital technologies. The chapter justifies, at the beginning, the legitimate reason for their coexistence, which is realized through language. Again, Foucault appears at the beginning of the reasoning, but he uses the notion of discourse introduced by Boole. Language appears as a dialectical connection between the representation of the world and an arbitrary, artificial system, which is done by, among others, Alain Badiou. Boole, who created logical calculus, chose the other side at the same time, preceding a similar breakthrough that appeared in mathematics at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The next part of the chapter presents an analysis of the similarity of natural language and mathematics as parallel symbolic systems. Boole introduces the concept of the universe of discourse, which evokes an artificial reductionist descriptive system, which is an inspiration for the concept of discourse transferred into the area of social and philosophical entities. Zelig Harris sets out these two paths of development of the idea of discourse in the twentieth century. Discourse as a social phenomenon becomes the basis of extensive studies, providing both insight into the nature and dynamics of language and social reality. This chapter describes the development of these studies and their tool, which was discourse. They provide justification for the constructivist role of language, reinforcing its arbitrary and autonomous status. On the other hand, they justify the heteromorphy of language games, using the concept of Lyotard, i.e. the different interpretations of reality, leading to the different instances of knowledge and even different knowledges. This construction simultaneously implements the idea of the universe of Boolean discourse.