During 1881, the British logicians John Venn and Hugh MacColl engaged in a brief dispute in Nature about ‘symbolical logic’. The letters to the editor shed interesting light on the early reception of MacColl’s contributions to logic and his position in the logical community of the Victorian era. Drawing on the correspondence between Venn and William Stanley Jevons, this paper analyzes the background and context of these letters, adding to the recent interest in the social dimensions of the development of British algebraic logic in the confusing intermediary period between the 1870s and 1890s.

中文翻译：

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自然界中的维恩-麦克科尔争端

1881 年，英国逻辑学家约翰·维恩 (John Venn) 和休·麦科尔 (Hugh MacColl) 在《自然》杂志上就“符号逻辑”进行了一场简短的争论。给编辑的信件揭示了 MacColl 对逻辑的贡献以及他在维多利亚时代逻辑社区中的地位的早期接受程度。本文利用维恩和威廉斯坦利杰文斯之间的对应关系，分析了这些信件的背景和语境，增加了最近对英国代数逻辑在 1870 年代和 1890 年代之间令人困惑的中间时期发展的社会维度的兴趣。