He says:<p><i>over the course of the century that followed, a few progressively simpler forms of it were found</i><p>and<p><i>But in the context of George Boole, one can say that it’s a minimal version of his big idea</i><p>Since this is an aside, he doesn&#x27;t cover it in depth. However, he is clearly saying (1) that his claim is a derivative of Boole&#x27;s idea, and (2) that lots of other people made simplifications before he did.<p>This doesn&#x27;t sound to me like &quot;implicitly or explicitly taking credit for results he wasn&#x27;t the first person to discover&quot;.<p>And the last time I saw such a claim on HN, it was clearly wrong.<p>In passing, my own favorite simplification is G Spencer Brown&#x27;s Laws of Form, which has mostly been forgotten now.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Laws_of_Form" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Laws_of_Form</a>