the one hand that human thought, and thus the world as we perceive it, is similarly composed; and on the other, that syntax is also composed of logical propositions. Advocates of early formalism had compared mathematics to a game of chess where all valid moves are based on a handful of arbitrary rules void of any truly meaningful content. In his Course in General Linguistics (posthumous, 1916), Ferdinand de Saussure likewise compares the grammatical rules of a language to a game of chess, suggesting he may have been familiar with "game formalism". He however develops the idea to a different direction, attempting to demonstrate that each synchronic state of a language is similar to a chess composition in that its history is irrelevant to the players. Unlike the mathematical formalists, Saussure considers all signs as meaningful by definition, and argues that the "rules"—in his thesis, laws of the semiotic system—are universal and eternal. Thus, he is not talking about specific grammatical rules, but constant phenomena such as analogy and opposition. In 1943, Louis Hjelmslev combined Saussure's concept of the bilateral sign (meaning + form) with Rudolph Carnap's mathematical grammars. Hjelmslev was deeply influenced by the functional linguistics of the Prague linguistic circle, considering pragmatics as integral to grammar. Some advocates of functional linguistics however disagreed with Hjelmslev's logico-mathematical approach and his terminology where the word 'function' indicates a mere structural dependency in contradistinction with classical functionalism where it means 'purpose'. Hjelmslev was consequently called "formalist". In such reference, Hjelmslevian "formalism" is closer to Husserlian logicism than game formalism because semantics constitutes one the two fundamental planes of his notion of language. Again, Roman Jakobson, who was indeed a member of the Prague functionalist school, was also an advocate of a literary theory or movement called Russian formalism. This approach was not particularly mathematical, but aimed at analyzing the text in its own right. It received this name from its opponents who considered it as falsely separating literature from psychology. Wundt's idea of analyzing culture as the product of psychology was rejected by his successors in Europe. In mathematics, most scholars at the time sided with Husserl, although today philosopher Martin Kusch argues that Husserl failed to deliver a definitive refutation of psychologism. European structural and functional linguists agreed with Husserl and Saussure, both opposed to Wundt's psychological–historical view of language, giving semantics a core explanatory role in their linguistic theories.Interest