Sense and reference
"Morning star" and "evening star" both refer to Venus yet differ in sense — with this example Frege distinguished the "reference" of a term from its "sense," founding modern philosophy of language.
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Frege
Father of modern logic and analytic philosophy
Those Who Ground an Idea Into a Whole System · Disciples & School-Builders
Mathematical logicPhilosophy of languageFoundations of mathematics
Who they are
Frege (1848–1925), the German logician, founded modern predicate logic in his Begriffsschrift, distinguished "sense" from "reference," and tried to reduce arithmetic to logic (logicism). He all but created analytic philosophy and deeply influenced Russell, Wittgenstein and all of twentieth-century philosophy of language.
Primary sourcesFrege, Begriffsschrift, The Foundations of ArithmeticOn Sense and Reference
Key stories
Relationships
Disciple
Echoes today
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
Modern logicPredicate logic is the shared foundation of contemporary logic, computer science and linguistics.