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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

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178171

From mereology to boolean algebra

the role of regular open sets in alfred Tarski's work

Iris Loeb

pp. 259-277

Abstract

Can the content of a whole paper be explained by a single footnotę In 1956 Alfred Tarski made an effort in this direction in his chapter "On the Foundations of Boolean Algebra' (Tarski, 1956c). This chapter had originally appeared as the paper "Zur Grundlegung der Boole'schen Algebra, I' (Tarski, 1935), the sequel of which had never been published. This sequel should have contained, among other things, the atomless system of Boolean algebra, as Tarski points out (Tarski, 1956c, p. 341, fn. 2). In that same footnote Tarski also gives a model for atomless Boolean algebra, consisting of the family of so-called regular open sets of a Euclidean space and the relation of set-inclusion. He then refers back to another chapter in Tarski (1956b): Foundations of the Geometry of Solids (Tarski, 1956a). This reference and the model of atomless Boolean algebra appear only in the 1956 edition (Tarski, 1956c); they are absent in Tarski (1935).

Publication details

Published in:

Mulligan Kevin, Placek Tomasz (2014) The history and philosophy of Polish logic: essays in honour of Jan Woleński. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 259-277

DOI: 10.1057/9781137030894_13

Full citation:

Loeb Iris (2014) „From mereology to boolean algebra: the role of regular open sets in alfred Tarski's work“, In: K. Mulligan & T. Placek (eds.), The history and philosophy of Polish logic, Dordrecht, Springer, 259–277.