Begriffsschrift

Begriffsschrift (German for, roughly, "concept-writing") is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book.

Begriffsschrift is usually translated as concept writing or concept notation; the full title of the book identifies it as "a formula language, modeled on that of arithmetic, for pure thought." Frege's motivation for developing his formal approach to logic resembled Leibniz's motivation for his calculus ratiocinator (despite that, in the foreword Frege clearly denies that he achieved this aim, and also that his main aim would be constructing an ideal language like Leibniz's, which Frege declares to be a quite hard and idealistic—though not impossible—task). Frege went on to employ his logical calculus in his research on the foundations of mathematics, carried out over the next quarter-century. This is the first work in Analytical Philosophy, a field that later British and Anglo philosophers such as Bertrand Russell further developed.