: Frank Markham Brown’s Boolean Reasoning: The Logic of Boolean Equations

where (~xn) ∈ B and B is a Boolean algebra. Only finite Boolean algebras are considered. The Boolean logic presented is based on the abstract Boolean algebra given by Huntington’s [14] postulates and on a special canonical form for a Boolean function given by Archie Blake [2]. The theory of reasoning is divided into functional and general parts, both of which seek antecedents or consequents of the Boolean expressions given. Applications of Boolean reasoning, given by the author, include medical diagnosis, digital fault-location, modeling the adrenal gland, among other things. Brown’s monograph-textbook is for all philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians interested in 20th century development of the Boole–Schröder [3, 4, 26] algebra of logic and for various scientists, engineers, and medical experts looking for inference techniques that can be applied to Boolean data. A distinctive feature of the book is that it emphasizes reasoning as a primary object of logic as contrasted to Quinean [19, 20, 21, 22] formula-minimization.