Picture 1 of 1

Stock photo

The Philosophical Status of Diagrams - 9781575862941 - Picture 1 of 1

The Philosophical Status of Diagrams by Mark Greaves (Paperback, 2001)

BOOKS etc. (517747)

99.5% positive Feedback

Price:

£21.65

Free postage

Estimated delivery Sat, 3 May - Mon, 12 May

Returns:

60 days return. Buyer pays for return postage. If you use an eBay delivery label, it will be deducted from your refund amount.

Condition:

New

ISBN-13: 9781575862941, 978-1575862941. No serious formal proof system is based on diagrams. This text explores the reasons why structured graphics have been ignored in modern formal theories of axiomatic systems.

About this product

Product Information

The use of diagrams in logic and geometry has encountered resistance in recent years. For a proof to be valid in geometry, it must not rely on the graphical properties of a diagram. In logic, the teaching of proofs depends on sentenial representations, ideas formed as natural language sentences such as If A is true and B is true.... No serious formal proof system is based on diagrams. This book explores the reasons why structured graphics have been largely ignored in contemporary formal theories of axiomatic systems. In particular, it elucidates the systematic forces in the intellectual history of mathematics which have driven the adoption of sentential representational styles over diagrammatic ones. In this book, the effects of historical forces on the evolution of diagrammatically-based systems of inference in logic and geometry are traced from antiquity to the early twentieth-century work of David Hilbert. From this exploration emerges an understanding that the present negative attitudes towards the use of diagrams in logic and geometry owe more to implicit appeals to their history and philosophical background than to any technical incompatibility with modern theories of logical systems.