Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.programming > #2478

Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions

Cross-posted to 5 groups.

Show all headers | View raw

Barb Knox <see@sig.below> writes:

> In article <87ip9j8ctc.fsf@informatimago.com>,
>  "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes.  John McCarthy didn't understand lambda calculus at the time. He
>> just used the lambda notation for his functions
>
> Yeah right.  McCarthy had a PhD in mathematics and specialised in 
> mathematical logic; of course he knew lambda calculus.  Or do you 
> believe his use of "lambda" was just a coincidence?

  Naturally McCarthy got the lambda notation from lambda
calculus. McCarthy was not a mathematical logician by any stretch of the
imagination -- his research was mainly in computer science, artificial
intelligence in particular, and his PhD dissertation was on a problem in
partial differantial equations -- and had this to say about the state of
his understanding of the lambda calculus at the time:

   To use functions as arguments, one needs a notation for functions,
   and it seemed natural to use the lambda-notation of Church (1941). I
   didn't understand the rest of the book, so I wasn't tempted to
   implement his more general mechanism for defining functions.

This excerpt is from McCarthy's /History of Lisp/, available on-line at:

   http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp.ps

> Are you a moron?  Is that why you have such a self-aggrandising
> nickname?

  You think "Pascal J. Bourguignon" a "self-aggrandising nickname"?

-- 
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen"
  - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Back to comp.programming | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Totaram Sanadhya <swami.totaram.sanadhya@gmail.com> - 2012-10-31 00:24 -0700
  Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Barb Knox <see@sig.below> - 2012-10-31 21:14 +1300
    Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Totaram Sanadhya <swami.totaram.sanadhya@gmail.com> - 2012-10-31 10:34 -0700
      Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> - 2012-10-31 23:36 +0100
  Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Nils M Holm <news2009@t3x.org> - 2012-10-31 09:21 +0000
  Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-02 14:45 +0100
    Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Rivka Miller <rivkaumiller@gmail.com> - 2012-11-02 18:59 -0700
      Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-03 04:14 +0100
        Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Rivka Miller <rivkaumiller@gmail.com> - 2012-11-05 16:53 -0800
          Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-06 07:28 +0100
            Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Barb Knox <see@sig.below> - 2012-11-08 17:35 +1300
              Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi> - 2012-11-08 07:42 +0200
                Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-08 21:47 +0100
                Re: Associativity paradox in functional expressions Barb Knox <see@sig.below> - 2012-11-10 15:13 +1300

csiph-web