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consequences of his assumptions in the readiest
and speediest way. The logician does not care
much what the conclusions from this or that
system of assumptions may be. What he is
interested in is in dissecting the mathema-
tician's
reasonings, in finding out what
their elementary steps are, and in showing what
positive facts about the real universe of things
and of thoughts it is from which the necessity
of the mathematician's reasonings and the
validity of other kinds of reasonings depend,
and exactly what the nature of that depen-
dence is. I have already pointed out that the
characters that make a system of symbols
good for logical [??mathematical] purposes are quite contrary to

Notes and Questions

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gnox

The word "logical" in the last line must be a mistake for "mathematical," otherwise the sentence as it ends on the next page would contradict itself.

jeffdown1

Yes, there would be no contrast if he was comparing logical notation to logical notation in that sentence, so he likely meant to use the work "mathematical" in one of the two places. Having said that, it is good to transcribe the words we see--especially when they are clear--and then to note as you have that there appears be an error. That way, we separate the tasks of transcription from interpretation.