Disputatio:Iosephus Peano

Latest comment: abhinc 14 annos by IacobusAmor in topic Latinitas

Latinitas

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"Interest Peano in 'mathematicae fundatione', hodie connexa theoria copiae." This appears to mean "The theory of abundance (connected today) matters to Peano in the foundation of mathematics." Some work needed here! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:31, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply

'Peano is involved in the "founding of mathematics" (tee-hee),* today joined. The theory of means.' ??? *The quotes around founding of mathematics must be some variety of scare quotes, investing the phrase with self-conscious emotion. IacobusAmor 14:07, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
"... primum liber posita est omnia mathematica super logicam." I won't say what this means in Latin, but if I read it as English it comes out as "... the first book that placed the whole of mathematics on a logical basis" or something like that. Is that what's intended? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:03, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Primum (neuter) can't go with liber (masculine), ergo, it must be an adverb; and omnia (neuter plural) can't go with mathematica (feminine singular): the only syntactical connections in the passage lead us to: 'At first, the book: mathematics has been discarded; everything over logic!' (That actually makes a kind of sense!) IacobusAmor 14:16, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
OK, OK. Enough fun. Anyway, I'm not sure of this clause so I left it for the moment. I take it that theoria copiae is "set theory"? I suggest "theoria copiarum" because they told me there was (nearly always) more than one set (whereas in English noun collocations like "set theory" plurals aren't usually allowed). But who am I to say?! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:23, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
In the pattern seen in set theory, the objective noun looks singular in form but is often plural in sense: set theory = 'a theory of sets'. Thus also football = 'ball of (played with) feet', drug laws = 'laws of (about) drugs', flypaper = 'paper of (for catching) flies', goatherd = 'herd(er) of goats', trade union = 'union of trades'. ¶ Anything heaped together is a congeries. IacobusAmor 14:43, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
If the book's that important we'll want an article on it eventually; that's why I amended the external link to place it after the title, leaving the title itself as a redlink. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:23, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Yes, you were correct on what I meant. Do we have any cites yet for 'set theory'? It does not seem that we have a term yet, so I made up theoria copiae. Pantocrator 23:44, 19 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
copiarum seems to have some success. [1] But I don't find any other hits for that. I confess I don't know exactly what else to try for on google. Andrew's logic is of course very reasonable as, were it not for the plurality of sets, there wouldn't really be a point of inventing a branch of mathematics to study their interaction. --Ioscius 01:32, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
The word set requires the longest article in the OED, so the task of finding an apt Latin term for a particular sense of it may not be easy. Assuming that no Latin-speaking logician has provided a useful attestion, you need to specify what, exactly, you mean by set. Concepts like 'a plenty, an abundance; supplies, provisions; troops; means, opportunity' (all copia) would seem to be unlikely places to start. Notions of the wanted kind of "set" that come first to mind are: accumulation, amassment, arrangement, array, assemblage, assortment, batch, bunch, clump, cluster, collection, collocation, combination, disposition, group, heap, lot, mass, miscellany, order, ordering, ordination, pack, pile, progression, run, selection, series, stack, succession, suite, things. Maybe these terms will give someone a useful idea. IacobusAmor 02:58, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
We already have an article Copia about the mathematical concept, from where I took the name. Pantocrator 03:33, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
If you look at the first draft of that article, you see a strange sense of copia (one wonders where it came from, and whether its evolution was well-advised):
Copia rerum mathematicorum elementalum collectio est. In philosophia, copiae objecta abstracta sunt.
An abundance of "elemointal" mathematicians' things is an inference. In philosophy, supplies are abstract "objects."
(The English misspelling is intentional, to match the Latin one.) The adjective elementalis and the noun obiectum seem not to be in Cassell's, which says that in logic (the underlying framework here, right?), conlectio is 'a conclusion, inference'. How do you get 'set' from 'abundance, supplies', etc.? IacobusAmor 05:19, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Peano used classis - that's the word I would have chosen had I not seen copia already used. Pantocrator 05:27, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
The history of the text suggests that copia was meant to convey the idea of plurality (or 'abundance', if you will), and then it evolved to mean something else. Since classis is attested, it would seem to be the better choice. IacobusAmor 13:37, 21 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
As I pointed out before, Cassell's and most dictionaries cover only classical Latin. Objectum, collectio and elementalis are used in New Latin with the meaning of their English cognates. Pantocrator 05:27, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Sometimes perhaps by the lazy or the uninformed. An object is usually a res or a predicative dative (odio esse 'to be an object of hatred'); a collection is a conlatio (of money), a congeries, or idiomatically a verb; something elementary is elementarius or primus or perhaps simplex. IacobusAmor 13:37, 21 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Elementalum has no meaning, except perhaps as something like 'of elemointal' (it's misspelled). IacobusAmor 13:37, 21 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Many here expect to find the classical language, insofar as it can be achieved. IacobusAmor 13:25, 20 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
I replied at Vicipaedia:Taberna#Neo-Latinisms. Pantocrator 09:19, 21 Februarii 2010 (UTC)Reply
Revertere ad "Iosephus Peano".