Re: General Form of Relationships?

The question was related to designing a system that can store and process data using a consistent syntax so that it emmulates a human's flexiblity in learning and processing.

My initial example of 'John giving Mary a ball' was more complicated that I realized because it involves different states over a period of time. I should have stated a simpler example where things are in a static state. The question should have been can all static states be described by one or more combination of binary relationships or are there some types of relationship that cannot be reduced to compound binary relationships (regardless of syntax: infix, prefix). For example

"ball isNextTo box" could be generalized as:
Relator t1, t2

"ball isBetween box and chair" could be generalized into:
R t1, t2, t3

But can ternary and higher relationships always be broken down into binary relationships, ie:
R2 (R1 t1, t2), t3

But then I thought of "-5" or "not Red", in these cases, the general form is:
R t1

Would it be correct to conclude, the general syntax is: R t1, ....
where R could be a relator, predicate, operator, function, etc. and t1 is a thing, element, term, input, data, etc.

In searching the web I found out this concept is already described by lambda calculus.

Would you consider a DNA to be the ultimate LISP program / lambda expression? Received on Tue Dec 31 2002 - 23:20:23 CET