Tag Archives: Saunders Mac Lane

Hilbert and Ackermann • Principles of Mathematical Logic (1928) For the intuitive interpretation on which we have hitherto based the predicate calculus, it was essential that the sentences and predicates should be sharply differentiated from the individuals, which occur as … Continue reading →

A demonstration rests in a finite number of steps. G. Spencer Brown • Laws of Form David Hilbert • “On the Infinite” (1925) Finally, let us recall our real subject and, so far as the infinite is concerned, draw the … Continue reading →

C.S. Peirce • “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism” (1906) I will now say a few words about what you have called Categories, but for which I prefer the designation Predicaments, and which you have explained as predicates of predicates. … Continue reading →

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Immanuel Kant (1785) C.S. Peirce • “On a New List of Categories” (1867) §1.  This paper is based … Continue reading →

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists … ☙ Marcel Proust When it comes to looking … Continue reading →

A few years ago I began a sketch on the “Precursors of Category Theory”, tracing the continuities of the category concept from Aristotle, to Kant and Peirce, through Hilbert and Ackermann, to contemporary mathematical practice.  My notes on the project … Continue reading →