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Why did Alfred North Whitehead begin writing A Treatise on Universal Algebra?
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Alfred North Whitehead
Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, c. 1925.
Alfred North Whitehead began writing A Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898) because he was stimulated by pioneering works in modern algebra. Following his fellowship dissertation on James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electricity and magnetism, his interests expanded toward a scrutiny of mathematical symbolism and ideas. Consequently, he envisaged a detailed comparative study of systems of symbolic reasoning that would be allied to ordinary algebra.1