View source for Hugh MacColl

{{Short description|Scottish mathematician and novelist (1831–1909)}}
{{Distinguish|Hugh McColl}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}}
{{Infobox philosopher
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'''Hugh MacColl''' (before April 1885 spelled as '''Hugh McColl'''; 1831–1909) was a Scottish mathematician, [[logician]] and novelist.

==Life==
MacColl was the youngest son of a poor [[Scottish Highlands|Highland]] family that was at least partly [[Scottish Gaelic|Gaelic]]-speaking. Hugh's father died when he was still an infant, and Hugh was educated largely thanks to the efforts of his elder brother [[Malcolm MacColl]], an [[Scottish Episcopalian|Episcopalian]] clergyman and friend and political ally of [[William Ewart Gladstone]].<ref>{{cite DNB12|wstitle=MacColl, Malcolm|volume= 2|page=508}}</ref> Early in his acquaintanceship with Gladstone, Malcolm MacColl persuaded the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] politician to provide funds for Hugh's education at Oxford. It was proposed to send him to Oxford University's [[St Edmund Hall, Oxford|St. Edmund Hall]], but Gladstone made this conditional on Hugh MacColl agreeing to take orders in the [[Church of England]].{{clarify|date=July 2014}} Hugh MacColl refused this condition and, as a result, never obtained a university education, which may have limited his contribution to philosophy, and certainly prevented him from ever obtaining a formal academic position.<ref>Source: Gladstone-MacColl Correspondence, British Library. </ref>

After a few years working in different areas of Great Britain, MacColl relocated to [[Boulogne-sur-Mer]], in France on the Channel, where he developed the greater part of his work and became a [[French citizen]]. MacColl was not obscure during his time. He was a lifelong regular contributor to the ''Educational Times''. His correspondents included the logicians [[William Stanley Jevons]] and [[Charles Sanders Peirce]]. He also corresponded, and argued in print, with the young [[Bertrand Russell]], and reviewed [[Alfred North Whitehead]]'s 1898 ''Universal Algebra'' for ''Mind'' magazine.

==Works==
MacColl is known for three main accomplishments in formal and philosophical logic:

* During 1877–1879, while working out a problem involving [[integral|integration]], he published a four-part article establishing the first known variant of the [[propositional calculus]], terming it the "calculus of equivalent statements", preceding [[Gottlob Frege]]'s ''[[Begriffsschrift]]''. He subsequently published 11 articles in ''Mind'' magazine, during the period 1880–1908, and a text,<ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/symboliclogicits00macc | author=Hugh McColl | title=Symbolic Logic and its Applications | location=London | publisher=Longmans, Green, and Co. | year=1906 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Wilson, Edwin Bidwell|authorlink=Edwin Bidwell Wilson|title=Review: ''L'Algèbre de la Logique'', par Louis Couturat; ''Symbolic Logic and its Applications'', by Hugh MacColl; ''The Development of Symbolic Logic'' by A. T. Shearman|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.|date=1908|volume=14|issue=4|pages=175–191|url= https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1908-14-04/S0002-9904-1908-01573-8/S0002-9904-1908-01573-8.pdf|doi=10.1090/S0002-9904-1908-01573-8|doi-access=free}}</ref> in an effort to attract the attention of philosophers to his work.
* Anticipation of [[Clarence Irving Lewis]]'s systems of [[strict implication]], in work with which Lewis was familiar.<ref name="19C">{{ThoemmesBritish19C|MacColl, Hugh|699–703}}</ref>
* Construction of a logical system including later [[modal logic]]s, namely the system T of [[Robert Feys]] and [[Georg Henrik von Wright]], and system S5 of Lewis from 1918.<ref name="19C"/>

MacColl also published two novels, ''[[Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet]]'' (1889), concerning a journey to Mars and a utopian Martian society, and ''Ednor Whitlock'' (1891), dealing with a crisis of faith occasioned by exposure to new scientific ideas. While described by a recent critic as "best left unread",<ref>Stein Haugom Olsen, "Why Hugh MacColl is not, and will never be, part of any literary canon" in [https://books.google.com/books?id=veLr_ux9LAUC ''The Quality of Literature: Linguistic Studies in Literary Evaluation''], ed. Willie van Peer, [[John Benjamins Publishing Company]], 2008.</ref> the novels reveal social and moral values to which the author gave full expression in his 1909 publication ''Man's Origin, Destiny, and Duty'', an apology for [[Christianity]].

==Legacy==
There is presently a long-term MacColl Project, a joint venture of [[Greifswald University]] in Germany and the [[University of Oslo]], which intends to publish a critical edition of his work. Furthermore, the group of logic and [[epistemology]] at the [[Université Lille Nord de France|University of Lille]] (France) develop MacColl's suggestions for a dynamic [[free logic]]. The December 1999 issue of the magazine ''[[Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic]]'' published the proceedings of a 1998 conference devoted to MacColl's work.

==See also==
* [[Quine–McCluskey algorithm]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Rahman, S. & Redmond, J., 2008. "Hugh MacColl and the Birth of Logical Pluralism". In: ''Handbook of History of Logic''. Elsevier, vol. 4. Discusses MacColl's contributions to philosophy of language and logic including modal logic, logic of fictions and modal logic.
* Rahman, S. & Redmond, J., 2007. ''Hugh MacColl. An Overview of his Logical Work with Anthology''. College Publications. Contains a long introduction to MacColl's logic and reprints of his main logical work.
* Kneebone, G., 2001 (1963). ''Mathematical Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics''. Dover. Contains a brief introduction to the "calculus of equivalent statements."
* {{cite journal | last1 = Rahman | first1 = S. | last2 = Rückert | first2 = H. | date = 2001 | title = Dialogical Connexive Logic | doi = 10.1023/a:1010351931769 | journal = Synthese | volume = 127 | issue = 1–2| pages = 105–139 | s2cid = 207637306 }}
* [[Ivor Grattan-Guinness]], 2000. ''The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940''. Princeton Uni. Press.
* {{cite journal |title=McColl and Minimization |journal=History and Philosophy of Logic |volume=31 |number=4 |pages=337–348 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |issn=1464-5149 |date=November 2010 |orig-year=2010-10-27 |doi=10.1080/01445340.2010.517387 |author-first=Frank Markham |author-last=Brown <!-- |author-link=Frank Markham Brown --> |s2cid=216590641 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233139704 |access-date=2020-04-15 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200415201838/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233139704_McColl_and_Minimization |archive-date=2020-04-15}}
* {{cite journal | url=https://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/366 | author=Irving H. Anellis | authorlink=Irving Anellis| title=MacColl's influences on Peirce and Schröder | journal=Philosophia Scientiæ | volume=15 | number=1 | pages=97&ndash;128 |  year=2011 }}
* {{cite journal | author=Lukas M. Verburgt | title=The Venn-MacColl Dispute in ''Nature'' | journal=History and Philosophy of Logic | volume=41 | number=3 | pages=244&ndash;251 | year=2020 | doi=10.1080/01445340.2020.1758387 | s2cid=219928989 | doi-access=free }}
* {{cite SEP|url-id=logic-modal-origins|title=Modern Origins of Modal Logic|first=Roberta|last= Ballarin|date=May 2017}}

==External links==
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Hugh MacColl}}.
* [http://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/forskning/publikasjoner/tidsskrifter/njpl/vol3no1/vol3no1.pdf Hugh MacColl Issue] of the ''[[Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic]]'' (vol. 3 no. 1).

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maccoll, Hugh}}
[[Category:Scottish mathematicians]]
[[Category:Scottish logicians]]
[[Category:1831 births]]
[[Category:1909 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century Scottish philosophers]]
[[Category:20th-century Scottish philosophers]]
[[Category:19th-century Scottish people]]
[[Category:Scottish science fiction writers]]
[[Category:19th-century Scottish novelists]]