Talk:Atomic formula

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WikiProject Mathematics
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics.
Mathematics grading: Stub Class Low Importance  Field: Foundations, logic, and set theory

[edit] merge?

I'm not sure this shouldn't be merged into formula (mathematical logic). Is there enough to say to justify a separate article? --Trovatore 04:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Probably merge. I can't see any reason not to merge them. Unless somebody else comes up with one, I'd say that it makes sense to do so. Jon Awbrey 05:54, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Don't merge: The idea of an atom is important whenever you formally describe a logical system. This article could be expanded with more examples than the current example, with some statements about how atoms are usually chosen, with a category-theoretic description of atoms (aren't they terminal or initial objects in the category of statements in that logic, or something like that?). This term is used in a lot of definitions, and the article has several good inlinks. CiteSeer and Google Scholar indicate that this term is used by an awful lot of journal articles. So, I think that it would be helpful to have a separate article. -- Creidieki 20:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, you're right, there is not nearly enough to say about atomic formulas to make an article about it. Even this stub spends most of its space on well-formed formulas of propositional logic rather than atomic formulas. It is worth merging Well-formed formula at the same time, and its redirect WFF. CMummert ยท talk 02:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Hmm, I'm less sure about the latter. I don't really know how "well-formed formula" is standardly used, but if it's really as represented in the article, then it seems to be a much more general concept than "formula of the predicate calculus". It looks like any string accepted by a (given) formal grammar, which is surely too general to merge into formula (mathematical logic). --Trovatore 03:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)