Deep Sea Soundings and Explorations of the Bottom; or, The Ultimate Analysis of Human Knowledge.

Signed by the author's great grandson (also named Alexander B. Johnson), and inscribed to fellow philosopher David Rynin. None in OCLC, one record of the 1861 original offered for sale by Merwin-Clayton in 1910 (no price recorded). Corners slightly exposed, 1/2 inch closed tear to fore edge of front flyleaf, small photographic portrait affixed to front flyleaf. 78 pp. The author was an American philosopher and banker who emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Utica, New York. His 1836 work A Treatise on Language (first published in 1828 as The Philosophy of Human Knowledge; or, A Treatise on Language and then expanded) is now viewed as an early precursor to logical positivism, a school of thought that gained popularity in the 1920s Includes four illustrations depicting knowledge as a tree. David Rynin called A Treatise on Language 'the most important early American work on semantics,' and sees Johnson's thought echoed in Wittgenstein's positions on truth, questions, and the functionality of language. A significant and influential precursor to logical positivism. Contents include: Man's Triplicity; Triplicity of Human Knowledge; Triplicity of Things Knowable; The Analysis and Boundaries of Ideas; or, The Cycles of the Intellect; The Predestinate Ideas of the Intellect; The Relation of the Three Organisms to Each Other: The Relation of the Emotional Organism to the Physical, The Relation of the Intellectual to the Physical, The Relation of the Intellectual to the Emotional, The Two Different Organic Powers of the Intellect; The Polarity of Intellections; What We Think; How We Think; What We Cannot Think; The Order in which We Think; Conclusion.…