PREFACE

Alexander Wheelock Thayer introduces an exhaustive life of Beethoven by remarking, “There is but one road to excellence, even for the genius of a Handel or a Mozart—unremitted application.”
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Yet where does this road pass? Through a place? A time? Trying to understand a great thinker from long ago involves the researcher in a curious conundrum. We seem to know the conclusion—the published work, the famous insights—but what are the premises? George Boole received the Royal Society's firstever gold medal in mathematics in the year 1844, and his crowning achievement, The Laws of Thought, published ten years later, stands as a monument of mathematical thinking. What clues are left about how those accomplishments occurred? We have a myriad of private papers scattered here and there between Britain and Ireland. If possession of an exceptional mind is not enough, what were the necessary or sufficient conditions that made the work a possibility?