Read on Twitter
In an attempt to build a tool to easily create software applications I found out that I needed to understand logic with good clarity. This took me on a journey tracing back history of logic. Here's a thread where I share some of the cool stuff I am finding on this journey.
Leibniz in 17th century had a plan to create a universal language for doing calculations or ratiocinations as he called them. This program he dreamt would make human reason amenable to mathematics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis
John Wilkins around the same time created a manifesto to unify all human knowledge under one umbrella by creating a lingua franca for communication among international scholars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_Towards_a_Real_Character,_and_a_Philosophical_Language
Curiously famous essayist and scholar Jorge Luis Borges (1899—1986) has written an account on Wilkins' universal language: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/155/assignment/ex1/Borges.pdf
If you haven't yet I highly recommend reading one of Borges' short stories. Many of them share a trippy mathematic ambience, the kind you find in Escher's drawings. May be try starting with Circular Ruins, which I loved in reading in college: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circular_Ruins
Begriffsschrift (Roughly: ConceptScript) by Gottlob Frege can be thought of as a symbolic system in this lineage. It has a visual syntax that represents the state of the system so to speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begriffsschrift
Two other visual notation systems this reminds me of are Dave Keenan's Mockingbird syntax: http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/ and John Tromp's Lambda Diagrams: https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html
On the calculating devices of Llull and Leibniz:
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/let-us-calculate-leibniz-llull-and-the-computational-imagination
Traces the origin of this method to medieval Arabic divination boards called “Zairjas” (زايرجة) likely a Persian portmanteau of zaicha (horoscope) + daira (circle).
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/let-us-calculate-leibniz-llull-and-the-computational-imagination
Traces the origin of this method to medieval Arabic divination boards called “Zairjas” (زايرجة) likely a Persian portmanteau of zaicha (horoscope) + daira (circle).
Jorge Luis Borges and Martin Gardner has written on Llull’s diagrams.
Borges has a lukewarm take on it: https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1937-borges-raymondllullsthinkingmachine.pdf
Martin Gardner mostly dismisses it and thinks Llull was far behind his own times’ intellectual progress: https://archive.org/details/logicmachinesdia227gard
Borges has a lukewarm take on it: https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1937-borges-raymondllullsthinkingmachine.pdf
Martin Gardner mostly dismisses it and thinks Llull was far behind his own times’ intellectual progress: https://archive.org/details/logicmachinesdia227gard
To fulfil Leibniz' project of Characteristica Universalis, Giuseppe Peano learnt the craft of book printing, invented his own Latin variant, and published five volumes.
Source: Mechanization of Reasoning by Murawski and Marciszewski /via https://pron.github.io/posts/computation-logic-algebra-pt3
Source: Mechanization of Reasoning by Murawski and Marciszewski /via https://pron.github.io/posts/computation-logic-algebra-pt3
Umberto Eco has written a book about this project of creating an alphabet of thought. The Search for the Perfect Language (1993): https://amzn.to/3a843DO
It is interesting to note how Scholastic logic (from Aristotle to the medieval times) have come to influence modern logic.
TIL Syncategorematic term, the units of composition for a syllogistic proposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncategorematic_term
TIL Syncategorematic term, the units of composition for a syllogistic proposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncategorematic_term
Bumping on the limit of English language in taking me further in reading the source works in logic. Particularly pre-19th century, most of the great works are written in either Latin or one of the continental languages. Impetus to resume: https://twitter.com/prathyvsh/status/1163125669603135488
TIL about enthymemes, the rhetorical counter part of logical syllogism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthymeme
Looking into ancient logic, I can’t help but wonder if tacit knowledge that was made explicit returned back to the lore only to reappear as typographic form today after centuries.
Looking into ancient logic, I can’t help but wonder if tacit knowledge that was made explicit returned back to the lore only to reappear as typographic form today after centuries.
Latest find in the direction of universal character: 17th century Scottish philologist George Dalgarno wrote about Character Universalis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dalgarno
It’s George Boole’s birthday today (November 2). So, here’s a paper on the history of Boole’s notation: https://web.archive.org/web/20110724185437/https://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/forskning/publikasjoner/tidsskrifter/njpl/vol2no1/history.pdf
