Re: General semantics

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 23:56:07 GMT
Message-ID: <rU_In.4244$Z6.293_at_edtnps82>


Nilone wrote:
> On May 19, 5:12 pm, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:

>> Eg., I'd be curious as to who first talked about unary relations, which
>> seem an essential part of Codd's breakthrough.  Seems to me that
>> anything 'new' needs to be compared to what Codd wrote (though
>> apparently he had such a practical bent that he saw no need for nullary
>> relations).

>
> I did some checking and found http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-principles-of-mathematics/s27,
> from which I snip and paste liberally:
>
> "Peirce and Schröder have realized the great importance of the
> subject ... their method suffers technically ... from the fact that
> they regard a relation essentially as a class of couples, thus
> requiring elaborate formulae of summation for dealing with single
> relations. ... it was certainly from the opposite philosophical
> belief, which I derived from my friend Mr G. E. Moore, that I was led
> to a different formal treatment of relations."
>
> Am I correct in thinking that Russell's 'single relations' refer to
> unary relations? Although I didn't follow up all the references, some
> further checking makes it seem as if Peirce first developed the idea.
> According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce#Mathematics_of_logic,
> Codd studied under Burks who strongly advocated the ideas of Peirce,
> so it seems likely that Codd would build on that foundation.
> ...

That's not the first time I had the impression that Russell was foretelling the future. Maybe there's a clue in a sentence you snipped:

"... This view is derived, I think, probably unconsciously, from a philosophical error: it has always been customary to suppose relational propositions less ultimate than class-propositions (or subject-predicate propositions, with which class-propositions are habitually confounded), and this has led to a desire to treat relations as a kind of classes."

Looks to me as if the 'error' he's talking about is either the same as what Date and Darwen call a "Great Blunder" or some kind of relation-valued attribute! (Can't remember if it would be the first or second Great Blunder.) Received on Thu May 20 2010 - 01:56:07 CEST

Original text of this message