Relation Algebra - Historical Remarks

Historical Remarks

DeMorgan founded RA in 1860, but C. S. Peirce took it much further and became fascinated with its philosophical power. The work of DeMorgan and Peirce came to be known mainly in the extended and definitive form Ernst Schröder gave it in Vol. 3 of his Vorlesungen (1890–1905). Principia Mathematica drew strongly on Schröder's RA, but acknowledged him only as the inventor of the notation. In 1912, Alwin Korselt proved that a particular formula in which the quantifiers were nested 4 deep had no RA equivalent. This fact led to a loss of interest in RA until Tarski (1941) began writing about it. His students have continued to develop RA down to the present day. Tarski returned to RA in the 1970s with the help of Steven Givant; this collaboration resulted in the monograph by Tarski and Givant (1987), the definitive reference for this subject. For more on the history of RA, see Maddux (1991, 2006).

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