Talk:Begriffsschrift

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The article is off to a good start, but the language in certain passages needs improvment. Also more refererence to the work would not hurt. Additionally the translations seem weak, and if they are original could use some work. I am not familiar enough with frege's work to attempt this, nor do I have access to original works to flesh out quotes. Oceanofperceptions 00:40, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is a good start, but whoever rewrites it should remember that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia article for general readers who are curious about the subject, not really for undergraduates who already know something about it and want to be better oriented than they already are. It doesn't make things clearer to say that the Begriffsschrift 'is essentially classical bivalent second-order logic with identity', because most general readers don't know what that is; you can't explain something by referring to something else that assumes a fair degree of prior knowledge. Having said that, the table comparing Frege's notation to modern notation strikes me as a model of its kind. Lexo 16:57, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More material at de:Begriffsschrift

I've recently made some major changes to the German version of this article: [1]. If somebody wants to use some material from there, please do. --Jan Schreiber 12:13, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Last night I added a table to the German version that compares the Begriffsschrift and modern notation. Most of the images used there are on Commons, so you just have to replace "Bild:" with "Image:" in the table if you want to use it. Example:

Frege's Notation	Modern Notation	Read as	Name
		A and B	Conjunction

--Jan Schreiber 10:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect

I first looked for this article under the misspelling "Begriffschrift" and was surprised no article existed and started getting ready to write one, before discovering the misspelling. Could someone add a redirect from the misspelled title to this article? Thanks.

[edit] New entry ancestral relation

I have moved the technical discussion of Frege's beloved "ancestral" to the new stand-alone entry ancestral relation. I have also edited this discussion a fair bit.

Typically, mathematical and philosophical concepts have no clear originator (modulo the witticism that everything truly worthwhile can be found somewhere in Plato!). Mathematical logic is a clear exception; it begins with the Begriffschrift. But so few copies of the B were printed, its notation was so off-putting, and Frege was so sarcastic in print when debating with others, that this historical fact did not become standard knowledge until the 1960s. It is an interesting question how many university libraries in the English speaking world had a copy of the B before WWII. The Library of Congress of the USA did not acquire its copy of the B until 1964! The first order logic we all employ and love mostly stems from the writings of Charles Peirce and Peano. Peirce and his student Oscar Mitchell invented quantification in the 1880s; they knew nothing of Frege. Peano read Peirce and Frege. All of Europe, Russell and Whitehead included, read Peano.Palnot (talk) 09:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)