First Alcibiades

Papyrus fragment of Alcibiades I, section 131.c-e.

The First Alcibiades or Alcibiades I (Ancient Greek: Ἀλκιβιάδης αʹ) is a dialogue featuring Alcibiades in conversation with Socrates. It is ascribed to Plato, although scholars are divided on the question of its authenticity.

Contents 1 Content 2 Authenticity 3 Dating 4 References 5 Bibliography 6 External links

Content

In the preface Alcibiades is described as an ambitious young man who is eager to enter public life. He is extremely proud of his good looks, noble birth, many friends, possessions and his connection to Pericles, the leader of the Athenian state. Alcibiades has many admirers but they have all run away, afraid of his coldness. Socrates was the first of his admirers but he has not spoken to him for many years. Now the older man tries to help the youth with his questions before Alcibiades presents himself in front of the Athenian assembly. For the rest of the dialogue Socrates explains the many reasons why Alcibiades needs him. By the end of Alcibiades I, the youth is much persuaded by Socrates' reasoning, and accepts him as his mentor.

The first topic they enter is the essence of politics – war and peace. Socrates claims that people should fight on just grounds but he doubts that Alcibiades has got any knowledge about justice. Prodded by Socrates’ questioning Alcibiades admits that he has never learned the nature of justice from a master nor has discovered it by himself .

Alcibiades suggests that politics is not about justice but expediency and the two principles could be opposed. Socrates persuades him that he was mistaken, and there is no expediency without justice. The humiliated youth concedes that he knows nothing about politics.

Later Alcibiades says that he is not concerned about his ignorance because all the other Athenian politicians are ignorant. Socrates reminds him that his true rivals are the kings of Sparta and Persia. He delivers a long lecture about the careful education, glorious might and unparalleled richness of these foreign rulers. Alcibiades has got cold feet which was exactly the purpose of Socrates’ speech.

After this interlude the dialogue proceeds with further questioning about the rules of society. Socrates points to the many contradictions in Alcibiades’ thoughts. Later they agree that man has to follow the advise of the famous Delphic phrase: gnōthi seautón meaning know thyself. They discuss that the "ruling principle" of man is not the body but the soul. Somebody's true lover loves his soul, while the lover of the body flies as soon as the youth fades. With this Socrates proves that he is the only true lover of Alcibiades. "From this day forward, I must and will follow you as you have followed me; I will be the disciple, and you shall be my master", proclaims the youth. Together they will work on to improve Alcibiades' character because only the virtuous has the right to govern. Tyrannical power should not be the aim of individuals but people accept to be commanded by a superior.

In the last sentence Socrates expresses his hope that Alcibiades will persist but he has fears because the power of the state "may be too much" for both of them.
 

Authenticity

 

In antiquity Alcibiades I was regarded as the best text to introduce one to Platonic philosophy, which may be why it has continued to be included in the Platonic corpus since then. The authenticity of the dialogue was never doubted in antiquity. It was not until 1836 that the German scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher argued against the ascription to Plato.^[1] Subsequently its popularity declined. However, stylometrical research supports Plato's authorship,^[2] and some scholars have recently defended its authenticity.^[3]

Dating

 

Traditionally, the First Alcibiades has been considered an early dialogue. Gerard Ledger's stylometric analysis supported this tradition, dating the work to the 390's.^[4] Julia Annas, in supporting the authenticity of Rival Lovers, saw both dialogues as laying the foundation for ideas Plato would later develop in Charmides.

A later dating has also been defended. Nicholas Denyer suggests that it was written in the 350's BC, when Plato, back in Athens, could reflect on the similarities between Dionysius II of Syracuse (as we know him from the Seventh Letter) and Alcibiades—two young men interested in philosophy but compromised by their ambition and faulty early education.^[5] This hypothesis requires skepticism about what is usually regarded as the only fairly certain result of Platonic stylometry, Plato's marked tendency to avoid hiatus in the six dialogues widely believed to have been composed in the period to which Denyer assigns First Alcibiades (Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws).^[6]


R.S. Bluck, although unimpressed by previous arguments against the dialogue's authenticity, tentatively suggests a date after the end of Plato's life, approximately 343/2 BC, based especially on "a striking parallelism between the Alcibiades and early works of Aristotle, as well as certain other compositions that probably belong to the same period as the latter."^[8]

References

 

1. ^ Denyer (2001): 15.
2. ^ Young (1998): 35-36.
3. ^ Denyer (2001): 14-26.
4. ^ Young (1998)
5. ^ Denyer (2001): 11-14. Cf. 20-24
6. ^ Denyer (2001): 23 n. 19
7. ^ Pamela M. Clark, "The Greater Alcibiades," Classical Quarterly N.S. 5 (1955), pp. 231-240
8. ^ R.S. Bluck, "The Origin of the Greater Alcibiades," Classical Quarterly N.S. 3 (1953), pp. 46-52

 

Bibliography

 

• Denyer, Nicholas, "introduction", in Plato, Alcibiades, Nicholas Denyer (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 1-26.
• Foucault, Michel, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982 (New York: Picador, 2005).
• Young, Charles M., "Plato and Computer Dating", in Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato: Critical Assessments volume 1: General Issues of Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1998): 29-49.

 

External links

 

• Greek text: Greek Wikisource, HODOI (with French translation and concordance)
• First Alcibiades, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg)

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Euler Diagram

This article is about Eulerian circles of set theory and logic. For the geometric Euler circle, see Nine-point circle.

An Euler diagram illustrating that the set of "animals with four legs" is a subset of "animals", but the set of "minerals" is disjoint (has no members in common) with "animals".

An Euler diagram is a diagrammatic means of representing sets and their relationships. The first use of "Eulerian circles" is commonly attributed to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783). They are closely related to Venn diagrams.

Venn and Euler diagrams were incorporated as part of instruction in set theory as part of the new math movement in the 1960s. Since then, they have also been adopted by other curriculum fields such as reading.^[1]

Contents 1 Overview 2 History 3 Example: Euler- to Venn-diagram and Karnaugh map 4 Gallery 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 External links

Overview

Euler diagrams consist of simple closed curves (usually circles) in the plane that depict sets. The sizes or shapes of the curves are not important: the significance of the diagram is in how they overlap. The spatial relationships between the regions bounded by each curve (overlap, containment or neither) corresponds to set-theoretic relationships (intersection, subset and disjointness).
Each Euler curve divides the plane into two regions or "zones": the interior, which symbolically represents the elements of the set, and the exterior, which represents all elements that are not members of the set. Curves whose interior zones do not intersect represent disjoint sets. Two curves whose interior zones intersect represent sets that have common elements; the zone inside both curves represents the set of elements common to both sets (the intersection of the sets). A curve that is contained completely within the interior zone of another represents a subset of it.

Examples of small Venn diagrams (on left) with shaded regions representing empty sets, showing how they can be easily transformed into equivalent Euler diagrams (right).

Venn diagrams are a more restrictive form of Euler diagrams. A Venn diagram must contain all the possible zones of overlap between its curves, representing all combinations of inclusion/exclusion of its constituent sets, but in an Euler diagram some zones might be missing. When the number of sets grows beyond 3, or even with three sets, but under the allowance of more than two curves passing at the same point, we start seeing the appearance of multiple mathematically unique Venn diagrams. Venn diagrams represent the relationships between n sets, with 2ⁿ zones, Euler diagrams may not have all zones. (An example is given below in the History section; in the top-right illustration the O and I diagrams are merely rotated; Venn stated that this difficulty in part led him to develop his diagrams).

In a logical setting, one can use model theoretic semantics to interpret Euler diagrams, within a universe of discourse. In the examples above, the Euler diagram depicts that the sets Animal and Mineral are disjoint since the corresponding curves are disjoint, and also that the set Four Legs is a subset of the set of Animals. The Venn diagram, which uses the same categories of Animal, Mineral, and Four Legs, does not encapsulate these relationships. Traditionally the emptiness of a set in Venn diagrams is depicted by shading in the region. Euler diagrams represent emptiness either by shading or by the use of a missing region.
Often a set of well-formedness conditions are imposed; these are topological or geometric constraints imposed on the structure of the diagram. For example, connectedness of zones might be enforced, or concurrency of curves or multiple points might be banned, as might tangential intersection of curves. In the diagram to the right, examples of small Venn diagrams are transformed into Euler diagrams by sequences of transformations; some of the intermediate diagrams have concurrency of curves. However, this sort of transformation of a Venn diagram with shading into an Euler diagram without shading is not always possible. There are examples of Euler diagrams with 9 sets that are not drawable using simple closed curves without the creation of unwanted zones since they would have to have non-planar dual graphs.
 

History

 

Photo of page from Hamilton's 1860 "Lectures" page 180. (Click on it, up to two times, to enlarge). The symbolism A, E, I, and O refer to the four forms of the syllogism. The small text to the left says: "The first employment of circular diagrams in logic improperly ascribed to Euler. To be found in Christian Weise."

On the right is a photo of page 74 from Couturat 1914 wherein he labels the 8 regions of the Venn diagram. The modern name for these "regions" is minterms. These are shown on the left with the variables x, y and z per Venn's drawing. The symbolism is as follows: logical AND ( & ) is represented by arithmetic multiplication, and the logical NOT ( ~ )is represented by " ' " after the variable, e.g. the region x'y'z is read as "NOT x AND NOT y AND z" i.e. ~x & ~y & z.

Both the Veitch and Karnaugh diagrams show all the minterms, but the Veitch is not particularly useful for reduction of formulas. Observe the strong resemblance between the Venn and Karnaugh diagrams; the colors and the variables x, y, and z are per Venn's example.

As shown in the illustration to the right, Sir William Hamilton in his posthumously published Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858–60) asserts that the original use of circles to "sensualize ... the abstractions of Logic" (p. 180) was not Leonhard Paul Euler (1707–1783) but rather Christian Weise (?–1708) in his Nucleus Logicoe Weisianoe that appeared in 1712 posthumously. He references Euler's Letters to a German Princess on different Matters of Physics and Philosophy¹" [¹Partie ii., Lettre XXXV., ed. Cournot. – ED.]^[2]
In Hamilton's illustration the four forms of the syllogism as symbolized by the drawings A, E, I and O are:^[3]

• A: The Universal Affirmative, Example: "All metals are elements".
• E: The Universal Negative, Example: "No metals are compound substances".
• I: The Particular Affirmative, Example: "Some metals are brittle".
• O: The Particular Negative, Example: "Some metals are not brittle".

In his 1881 Symbolic Logic Chapter V "Diagrammatic Representation", John Venn (1834–1923) comments on the remarkable prevalence of the Euler diagram:

"...of the first sixty logical treatises, published during the last century or so, which were consulted for this purpose:-somewhat at random, as they happened to be most accessible :-it appeared that thirty four appealed to the aid of diagrams, nearly all of these making use of the Eulerian Scheme." (Footnote 1 page 100)

Composite of two pages 115–116 from Venn 1881 showing his example of how to convert a syllogism of three parts into his type of diagram. Venn calls the circles "Eulerian circles" (cf Sandifer 2003, Venn 1881:114 etc) in the "Eulerian scheme" (Venn 1881:100) of "old-fashioned Eulerian diagrams" (Venn 1881:113).

But nevertheless, he contended "the inapplicability of this scheme for the purposes of a really general Logic" (page 100) and in a footnote observed that "it fits in but badly even with the four propositions of the common Logic [the four forms of the syllogism] to which it is normally applied" (page 101). Venn ends his chapter with the observation that will be made in the examples below – that their use is based on practice and intuition, not on a strict algorithmic practice:

“In fact ... those diagrams not only do not fit in with the ordinary scheme of propositions which they are employed to illustrate, but do not seem to have any recognized scheme of propositions to which they could be consistently affiliated.” (pp. 124–125)

Finally, in his Chapter XX HISTORIC NOTES Venn gets to a crucial criticism (italicized in the quote below); observe in Hamilton's illustration that the O (Particular Negative) and I (Particular Affirmative) are simply rotated:

"We now come to Euler's well-known circles which were first described in his Lettres a une Princesse d'Allemagne (Letters 102–105). The weak point about these consists in the fact that they only illustrate in strictness the actual relations of classes to one another, rather than the imperfect knowledge of these relations which we may possess, or wish to convey, by means of the proposition. Accordingly they will not fit in with the propositions of common logic, but demand the constitution of a new group of appropriate elementary propositions.... This defect must have been noticed from the first in the case of the particular affirmative and negative, for the same diagram is commonly employed to stand for them both, which it does indifferently well". (italics added: page 424)

(Sandifer 2003 reports that Euler makes such observations too; Euler reports that his figure 45 (a simple intersection of two circles) has 4 different interpretations). Whatever the case, armed with these observations and criticisms, Venn then demonstrates (pp. 100–125) how he derived what has become known as his Venn diagrams from the "old-fashioned Euler diagrams". In particular he gives an example, shown on the left.
By 1914 Louis Couturat (1868–1914) had labeled the terms as shown on the drawing on the right. Moreover, he had labeled the exterior region (shown as a'b'c') as well. He succinctly explains how to use the diagram – one must strike out the regions that are to vanish:

"VENN'S method is translated in geometrical diagrams which represent all the constituents, so that, in order to obtain the result, we need only strike out (by shading) those which are made to vanish by the data of the problem." (italics added p. 73)

Given the Venn's assignments, then, the unshaded areas inside the circles can be summed to yield the following equation for Venn's example:

"No Y is Z and ALL X is Y: therefore No X is Z" has the equation x'yz' + xyz' + x'y'z for the unshaded area inside the circles (but note that this is not entirely correct; see the next paragraph).

In Venn the 0th term, x'y'z', i.e. the background surrounding the circles, does not appear. Nowhere is it discussed or labeled, but Couturat corrects this in his drawing. The correct equation must include this unshaded area shown in boldface:

"No Y is Z and ALL X is Y: therefore No X is Z" has the equation x'yz' + xyz' + x'y'z + x'y'z' .

In modern usage the Venn diagram includes a "box" that surrounds all the circles; this is called the universe of discourse or the domain of discourse.
Couturat now observes that, in a direct algorithmic (formal, systematic) manner, one cannot derive reduced Boolean equations, nor does it show how to arrive at the conclusion "No X is Z". Couturat concluded that the process "has ... serious inconveniences as a method for solving logical problems":

"It does not show how the data are exhibited by canceling certain constituents, nor does it show how to combine the remaining constituents so as to obtain the consequences sought. In short, it serves only to exhibit one single step in the argument, namely the equation of the problem; it dispenses neither with the previous steps, i. e., "throwing of the problem into an equation" and the transformation of the premises, nor with the subsequent steps, i. e., the combinations that lead to the various consequences. Hence it is of very little use, inasmuch as the constituents can be represented by algebraic symbols quite as well as by plane regions, and are much easier to deal with in this form."(p. 75)

Thus the matter would rest until 1952 when Maurice Karnaugh (1924– ) would adapt and expand a method proposed by Edward W. Veitch; this work would rely on the truth table method precisely defined in Emil Post's 1921 PhD thesis "Introduction to a general theory of elementary propositions" and the application of propositional logic to switching logic by (among others) Claude Shannon, George Stibitz, and Alan Turing.^[4] For example, in chapter "Boolean Algebra" Hill and Peterson (1968, 1964) present sections 4.5ff "Set Theory as an Example of Boolean Algebra" and in it they present the Venn diagram with shading and all. They give examples of Venn diagrams to solve example switching-circuit problems, but end up with this statement:

"For more than three variables, the basic illustrative form of the Venn diagram is inadequate. Extensions are possible, however, the most convenient of which is the Karnaugh map, to be discussed in Chapter 6." (p. 64)

In Chapter 6, section 6.4 "Karnaugh Map Representation of Boolean Functions" they begin with:

"The Karnaugh map¹ [¹Karnaugh 1953] is one of the most powerful tools in the repertory of the logic designer. ... A Karnaugh map may be regarded either as a pictorial form of a truth table or as an extension of the Venn diagram." (pp. 103–104)

The history of Karnaugh's development of his "chart" or "map" method is obscure. Karnaugh in his 1953 referenced Veitch 1951, Veitch referenced Claude E. Shannon 1938 (essentially Shannon's Master's thesis at M.I.T.), and Shannon in turn referenced, among other authors of logic texts, Couturat 1914. In Veitch's method the variables are arranged in a rectangle or square; as described in Karnaugh map, Karnaugh in his method changed the order of the variables to correspond to what has become known as (the vertices of) a hypercube.

Example: Euler- to Venn-diagram and Karnaugh map

This example shows the Euler and Venn diagrams and Karnaugh map deriving and verifying the deduction "No X's are Z's". In the illustration and table the following logical symbols are used:

1 can be read as "true", 0 as "false"

~ for NOT and abbreviated to ' when illustrating the minterms e.g. x' =_defined NOT x,

+ for Boolean OR (from Boolean algebra: 0+0=0, 0+1 = 1+0 = 1, 1+1=1)

& (logical AND) between propositions; in the mintems AND is omitted in a manner similar to arithmetic multiplication: e.g. x'y'z =_defined ~x & ~y & z (From Boolean algebra: 0*0=0, 0*1 = 1*0=0, 1*1 = 1, where * is shown for clarity)

→ (logical IMPLICATION): read as IF ... THEN ..., or " IMPLIES ", P → Q =_defined NOT P OR Q

Before it can be presented in a Venn diagram or Karnaugh Map, the Euler diagram's syllogism "No Y is Z, All X is Y" must first be reworded into the more formal language of the propositional calculus: " 'It is not the case that: Y AND Z' AND 'If an X then a Y' ". Once the propositions are reduced to symbols and a propositional formula ( ~(y & z) & (x → y) ), one can construct the formula's truth table; from this table the Venn and/or the Karnaugh map are readily produced. By use of the adjacency of "1"s in the Karnaugh map (indicated by the grey ovals around terms 0 and 1 and around terms 2 and 6) one can "reduce" the example's Boolean equation i.e. (x'y'z' + x'y'z) + (x'yz' + xyz') to just two terms: x'y' + yz'. But the means for deducing the notion that "No X is Z", and just how the reduction relates to this deduction, is not forthcoming from this example.

Given a proposed conclusion such as "No X is a Z", one can test whether or not it is a correct deduction by use of a truth table. The easiest method is put the starting formula on the left (abbreviate it as "P") and put the (possible) deduction on the right (abbreviate it as "Q") and connect the two with logical implication i.e. P → Q, read as IF P THEN Q. If the evaluation of the truth table produces all 1's under the implication-sign (→, the so-called major connective) then P → Q is a tautology. Given this fact, one can "detach" the formula on the right (abbreviated as "Q") in the manner described below the truth table.
Given the example above, the formula for the Euler and Venn diagrams is:

"No Y's are Z's" and "All X's are Y's": ( ~(y & z) & (x → y) ) =_defined P

And the proposed deduction is:

"No X's are Z's": ( ~ (x & z) ) =_defined Q

So now the formula to be evaluated can be abbreviated to:

( ~(y & z) & (x → y) ) → ( ~ (x & z) ): P → Q

IF ( "No Y's are Z's" and "All X's are Y's" ) THEN ( "No X's are Z's" )

The Truth Table demonstrates that the formula ( ~(y & z) & (x → y) ) → ( ~ (x & z) ) is a tautology as shown by all 1's in yellow column..

Square #	Venn, Karnaugh region		x	y	z		(~	(y	&	z)	&	(x	→	y))	→	(~	(x	&	z))
0	x'y'z'		0	0	0		1	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	0
1	x'y'z		0	0	1		1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1
2	x'yz'		0	1	0		1	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	0
3	x'yz		0	1	1		0	1	1	1	0	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	1
4	xy'z'		1	0	0		1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1	1	0	0
5	xy'z		1	0	1		1	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	1
6	xyz'		1	1	0		1	1	0	0	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	0	0
7	xyz		1	1	1		0	1	1	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	1	1	1

At this point the above implication P → Q (i.e. ~(y & z) & (x → y) ) → ~(x & z) ) is still a formula, and the deduction – the "detachment" of Q out of P → Q – has not occurred. But given the demonstration that P → Q is tautology, the stage is now set for the use of the procedure of modus ponens to "detach" Q: "No X's are Z's" and dispense with the terms on the left.^[5]
Modus ponens (or "the fundamental rule of inference"^[6]) is often written as follows: The two terms on the left, "P → Q" and "P", are called premises (by convention linked by a comma), the symbol ⊢ means "yields" (in the sense of logical deduction), and the term on the right is called the conclusion:

P → Q, P ⊢ Q

For the modus ponens to succeed, both premises P → Q and P must be true. Because, as demonstrated above the premise P → Q is a tautology, "truth" is always the case no matter how x, y and z are valued, but "truth" will only be the case for P in those circumstances when P evaluates as "true" (e.g. rows 0 OR 1 OR 2 OR 6: x'y'z' + x'y'z + x'yz' + xyz' = x'y' + yz').^[7]

P → Q , P ⊢ Q

i.e.: ( ~(y & z) & (x → y) ) → ( ~ (x & z) ) , ( ~(y & z) & (x → y) ) ⊢ ( ~ (x & z) )

i.e.: IF "No Y's are Z's" and "All X's are Y's" THEN "No X's are Z's", "No Y's are Z's" and "All X's are Y's" ⊢ "No X's are Z's"

One is now free to "detach" the conclusion "No X's are Z's", perhaps to use it in a subsequent deduction (or as a topic of conversation).
The use of tautological implication means that other possible deductions exist besides "No X's are Z's"; the criterion for a successful deduction is that the 1's under the sub-major connective on the right include all the 1's under the sub-major connective on the left (the major connective being the implication that results in the tautology). For example, in the truth table, on the right side of the implication (→, the major connective symbol) the bold-face column under the sub-major connective symbol " ~ " has the all the same 1s that appear in the bold-faced column under the left-side sub-major connective & (rows 0, 1, 2 and 6), plus two more (rows 3 and 4).

Gallery

• 

  A Venn diagram shows all possible intersections.
• 

  Euler diagram visualizing a real situation, the relationships between various supranational European organisations.
• 

  Euler diagram visualizing a real situation, the relationships between various supranational African organisations.
• 

  Humorous diagram comparing Euler and Venn diagrams.
• 

  Euler diagram of types of triangles, assuming isosceles triangles have at least 2 equal sides.
• 

  Euler diagram of terminology of the British Isles.

Footnotes

1. ^ Strategies for Reading Comprehension Venn Diagrams
2. ^ By the time these lectures of Hamilton were published, Hamilton too had died. His editors (symbolized by ED.), responsible for most of the footnoting, were the logicians Henry Longueville Mansel and John Veitch.
3. ^ Hamilton 1860:179. The examples are from Jevons 1881:71ff.
4. ^ See footnote at George Stibitz.
5. ^ This is a sophisticated concept. Russell and Whitehead (2nd edition 1927) in their Principia Mathematica describe it this way: "The trust in inference is the belief that if the two former assertions [the premises P, P→Q ] are not in error, the final assertion is not in error . . . An inference is the dropping of a true premiss [sic]; it is the dissolution of an implication" (p. 9). Further discussion of this appears in "Primitive Ideas and Propositions" as the first of their "primitive propositions" (axioms): *1.1 Anything implied by a true elementary proposition is true" (p. 94). In a footnote the authors refer the reader back to Russell's 1903 Principles of Mathematics §38.
6. ^ cf Reichenbach 1947:64
7. ^ Reichenbach discusses the fact that the implication P → Q need not be a tautology (a so-called "tautological implication"). Even "simple" implication (connective or adjunctive) will work, but only for those rows of the truth table that evaluate as true, cf Reichenbach 1947:64–66.

References

By date of publishing:

• Sir William Hamilton 1860 Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic edited by Henry Longueville Mansel and John Veitch, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London.
• W. Stanley Jevons 1880 Elemetnary Lessons in Logic: Deductive and Inductive. With Copious Questions and Examples, and a Vocabulary of Logical Terms, M. A. MacMillan and Co., London and New York.
• John Venn 1881 Symbolic Logic, MacMillan and Co., London.
• Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell 1913 1st edition, 1927 2nd edition Principia Mathematica to *56 Cambridge At The University Press (1962 edition), UK, no ISBN.
• Louis Couturat 1914 The Algebra of Logic: Authorized English Translation by Lydia Gillingham Robinson with a Preface by Philip E. B. Jourdain, The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago and London.
• Emil Post 1921 "Introduction to a general theory of elementary propositions" reprinted with commentary by Jean van Heijenoort in Jean van Heijenoort, editor 1967 From Frege to Gödel: A Sourcebook of Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, ISBN 0-674-42449-8 (pbk.)
• Claude E. Shannon 1938 "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits", Transactions American Institute of Electrical Engineers vol 57, pp. 471–495. Derived from Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers edited by N.J.A. Solane and Aaron D. Wyner, IEEE Press, New York.
• Hans Reichenbach 1947 Elements of Symbolic Logic republished 1980 by Dover Publications, Inc., NY, ISBN 0-486-24004-5.
• Edward W. Veitch 1952 "A Chart Method for Simplifying Truth Functions", Transactions of the 1952 ACM Annual Meeting, ACM Annual Conference/Annual Meeting "Pittsburgh", ACM, NY, pp. 127–133.
• Maurice Karnaugh November 1953 The Map Method for Synthesis of Combinational Logic Circuits, AIEE Committee on Technical Operations for presentation at the AIEE summer General Meeting, Atlantic City, N. J., June 15–19, 1953, pp. 593–599.
• Frederich J. Hill and Gerald R. Peterson 1968, 1974 Introduction to Switching Theory and Logical Design, John Wiley & Sons NY, ISBN 0-71-39882-9.
• Ed Sandifer 2003 How Euler Did It, http://www.maa.org/editorial/euler/How%20Euler%20Did%20It%2003%20Venn%20Diagrams.pdf

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Euler diagrams

• Euler Diagrams. Brighton, UK (2004).What are Euler Diagrams?
• Visualisation with Euler diagrams project

Where is LHC Headed?

The speakers are: Michael Peskin (author of the famous QFT textbook) Nima Arkani-Hamed, Riccardo Rattazzi, Gavin Salam, Matt Strassler and Raman Sundrum (or Randall-Sundrum fame).

Illusions of Grandeur?

Illusions of Gravity

Three spatial dimensions are visible all around us--up/down, left/right, forward/backward. Add time to the mix, and the result is a four-dimensional blending of space and time known as spacetime. Thus, we live in a four-dimensional universe. Or do we?

Amazingly, some new theories of physics predict that one of the three dimensions of space could be a kind of an illusion--that in actuality all the particles and fields that make up reality are moving about in a two-dimensional realm like the Flatland of Edwin A. Abbott. Gravity, too, would be part of the illusion: a force that is not present in the two-dimensional world but that materializes along with the emergence of the illusory third dimension.

UC Berkeley's Raphael Bousso presents a friendly introduction to the ideas behind the holographic principle, which may be very important in the hunt for a theory of quantum gravity. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Summer Lecture Series" [3/2006] [Science] [Show ID: 11140]

This is just a recoup of what had been transpiring since 2005. We have a pretty good picture of the ways such distinctions are held for perspective so that we may look inside the black hole? The labels of this blog entry help with this refreshing.

See Also:

• Graviton in a Can?  

• CFT and the Tomato Soup Can 

•  A Conformal Field Theory Approach?

Questions on the History of Mathematics

Arthur Miller
Einstein and Schrödinger never fully accepted the highly abstract nature of Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, says Miller. They agreed with Galileo's assertion that "the book of nature is written in mathematics", but they also realized the power of using visual imagery to represent mathematical symbols.

For most people I am sure it is of little interest that such an abstract language could have ever amounted to anything,since we might have been circumscribed to the natural living that is required that we could do without it. But really,  can we?

 Paul Dirac 

When one is doing mathematical work, there are essentially two different ways of thinking about the subject: the algebraic way, and the geometric way. With the algebraic way, one is all the time writing down equations and following rules of deduction, and interpreting these equations to get more equations. With the geometric way, one is thinking in terms of pictures; pictures which one imagines in space in some way, and one just tries to get a feeling for the relationships between the quantities occurring in those pictures. Now, a good mathematician has to be a master of both ways of those ways of thinking, but even so, he will have a preference for one or the other; I don't think he can avoid it. In my own case, my own preference is especially for the geometrical way.

So of course one appreciates those who start the conversation to help raise the questions in ones own mind. Might it be a shared response to something existing deeper in our society that it would warrant descriptions that we might be lacking in. Ways in which to describe something about nature. There is something definitely to be said about the geometer that can visualize the spaces within which they are working. It has to make sense. It has to describe something? Why then not just plain English(whatever language you choose)

String theory's mathematical tools were designed to unlock the most profound secrets of the cosmos, but they could have a far less esoteric purpose: to tease out the properties of some of the most complex yet useful types of material here on Earth.What Good are Mathematics in the Real World?

Do you know how many mathematical expressions are needed in order to describe the theory?

 The language of physics is mathematics. In order to study physics seriously, one needs to learn mathematics that took generations of brilliant people centuries to work out. Algebra, for example, was cutting-edge mathematics when it was being developed in Baghdad in the 9th century. But today it's just the first step along the journey.Guide to math needed to study physics

Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics

How mathematics arose from cognitive realizations. Ex. Newton and Calculus. The branches of mathematics. Who are it's developers and what did they develop and why?

 It may be as important as the history in relation to how one may perceive the history and development of mathematics. These were important insights into the way one might of asked how did emergence exist if such things could have been imagined in the mind of the beholder. To attempt to describe nature in the way that one might do by invention? So are these mathematical things discovered or are they invented? Why the history is important?

 This is the basis of the question of what already exists in terms of information has always existed and we are only getting a preview of a much more complicated system. It does not have to be a question of what a MBT exemplifies in itself, but raises the questions about what already exists, exists as part of what always existed. Where do ideas and mathematics come from?

This is a foundation stance that is taken right throughout science? If it exists in the universe, it exists in you? How does one connect?

See Also:

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION? 

See Also: Some Educational links to look at then.

•  Wolfram\alpha
-What is Wolfram\Alpha
• Khan Academy

The Birth of String Theory

• Edited by: Andrea Cappelli, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Florence
• Edited by: Elena Castellani, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
• Edited by: Filippo Colomo, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Florence
• Edited by: Paolo Di Vecchia, Niels Bohr Institutet, Copenhagen and Nordita, Stockholm