Home -> Usenet -> comp.databases.theory -> Re: Extending my question. Was: The relational model and relationalalgebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?

Re: Extending my question. Was: The relational model and relationalalgebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?

From: Mikito Harakiri <mikharakiri_at_ywho.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:23:48 -0800
Message-ID: <wTV2a.14$O%2.98_at_news.oracle.com> 


















  
In short, logic and set theory together are only a tiny part of mathematics.
Don't evangelize them.

  

Well, not being a mathematician, 
but having studied some 
  mathematics I was and 
still am under the impression that all modern 
  mathematics 
is based on set theory which is equivalent with logic. 



Set Reductionalism is a dicease 
that I was ill when being a student. Although Sets and Logic certainly spice 
mathematics with rigour, they are mostly irrelevant for practioner mathematician 
not working in those fields.





  
Here is a quote from Wikipedia
(http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics)

<quote>

  
The current dominant mathematical paradigm is based on axiomatic set theory 
  and formal logic. Virtually all mathematical theorems today can be formulated 
  as theorems of set theory. The 
  truth of a mathematical statement, in this view, is then nothing but the claim 
  that the statement can be derived from the axioms of set theory using the 
  rules of formal logic.

  
<quote/>


There is a difference between "can" 
and "have to". Reductionalizm to sets might be unnatural, unpractical, etc. The 
famous example is the ordered pair definition


 


(a, b) := {{a}, {a, b}}


 


AFAIK, no mathematical theorem is 
reformulated to use the above set based definition instead of 
ordered pairs. Ordered tuple is widely considered to be a basic 
concept (including Relational Theory;-).

Received on Fri Feb 14 2003 - 00:23:48 CET












Original text of this message