Gottlob Frege Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

The aim of scientific work is truth. While we internally something, we, and while we utter judgments, we.

Gottlob Frege
One cannot require that everything shall be defined, any more than one can require that a chemist shall decompose every substance.

Gottlob Frege
Logic has much the same relation to truth as physics has to weight or heat.

Gottlob Frege
A judgment, for me is not the mere grasping of a thought, but the admission of its truth.

Gottlob Frege
Is it always permissible to speak of the extension of a concept, of a class? And if not, how do we recognize the exceptional cases? Can we always infer from the extension of one concept's coinciding with that of a second, that every object which falls under the first concept also falls under the second?

Gottlob Frege
It is possible, of course, to operate with figures mechanically, just as it is possible to speak like a parrot: but that hardly deserves the names of thought. It only becomes possible at all after the mathematical notation has, as a result of genuine thought, been so developed that it does the thinking for us, so to speak.

Gottlob Frege
There is more danger of numerical sequences continued indefinitely than of trees growing up to heaven. Each will some time reach its greatest length.

Gottlob Frege
I compare arithmetic with a tree that unfolds upwards in a multitude of techniques and theorems while the root drives into the depths.

Gottlob Frege
The ideal of strictly scientific method in mathematics which I have tried to realise here, and which perhaps might be named after Euclid I should like to describe in the following way... The novelty of this book does not lie in the content of the theorems but in the development of the proofs and the foundations on which they are based... With this book I accomplish an object which I had in view in my Begriffsschrift of 1879 and which I announced in my Grundlagen der Arithmetik. I am here trying to prove the opinion on the concept of number that I expressed in the book last mentioned.

Gottlob Frege
Without some affinity in human ideas art would certainly be impossible; but it can never be exactly determined how far the intentions of the poet are realized.

Gottlob Frege
I hope I may claim in the present work to have made it probable that the laws of arithmetic are analytic judgments and consequently a priori. Arithmetic thus becomes simply a development of logic, and every proposition of arithmetic a law of logic, albeit a derivative one. To apply arithmetic in the physical sciences is to bring logic to bear on observed facts; calculation becomes deduction.

Gottlob Frege
One can hardly deny that mankind has a common store of thoughts which is transmitted from one generation to another.

Gottlob Frege
A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press.

Gottlob Frege
It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word.

Gottlob Frege
If I compare arithmetic with a tree that unfolds upward into a multitude of techniques and theorems while its root drives into the depths, then it seems to me that the impetus of the root.

Gottlob Frege
Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

Gottlob Frege
'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science.

Gottlob Frege
If the task of philosophy is to break the domination of words over the human mind [...], then my concept notation, being developed for these purposes, can be a useful instrument for philosophers [...] I believe the cause of logic has been advanced already by the invention of this concept notation.

Gottlob Frege
Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build arithmetic.

Gottlob Frege
This ideography is a "formula language", that is, a lingua characterica, a language written with special symbols, "for pure thought", that is, free from rhetorical embellishments, "modeled upon that of arithmetic", that is, constructed from specific symbols that are manipulated according to definite rules.

Gottlob Frege