edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (06/24/87)
A number of people have asked about the reference to AI in the
13th Century. Well I finally dug up the ole notebook and picked
it out. Unfortunately all I have is a name. The name is
Ramon Lull
Since the book was in latin, very old and so forth I guess I thought
I'd never check it out. Apparently Ramon was a popular person in the
sciences, black magic and those sort of things. His name appears
with other terms like shamans in my notebook.
I hope that helps.
mark
--
edwards@unix.macc.wisc.edu
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!edwards
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706mps@duke.cs.duke.edu (Michael P. Smith) (06/24/87)
In article <1654@uwmacc.UUCP> edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes: > > A number of people have asked about the reference to AI in the > 13th Century. Well I finally dug up the ole notebook and picked > it out. Unfortunately all I have is a name. The name is > > Ramon Lull > > > Since the book was in latin, very old and so forth I guess I thought > I'd never check it out. Apparently Ramon was a popular person in the > sciences, black magic and those sort of things. His name appears > with other terms like shamans in my notebook. > I'm no Lull expert, but here's part of an entry from W.L. Reese's DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION (Humanities, 1980), p. 319: \begin{quotation} Lull, Raymond. 1236-1315. Philosopher and missionary. Born in Palma, Majorca. Taught several years at Paris. His goal was to state the truths Christianity so succinctly that the infidels could not possibly deny them. To this end he wrote the *Ars Magna*, a mechanical method of exhaustively stating the possible relations of a topic. The method requires three concentric circles divided into compartments. One circle is divided into nine relevant subjects; a second circle is divided into nine relevant predicates; the third circle is divided into nine questions: whether? what? whence? why? how large? of what kind? when? where? how? One circle is fixed; the others rotate, providing a complete series of questions, and of statements in relation to them. \end{quotation} Lull is usually dismissed as a crackpot by historians, but had influence on the likes of Descartes and Leibniz centuries later. I believe that much of Lull's work is available in English translation. No doubt some interesting comparisons can be drawn between Lull's program and, say, conceptual dependency theory. But as to Mark's claim that Lull used the term 'artificial intelligence', I suspect that such usage occurs only in the mind of the translator. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael P. Smith "The world of the happy man is a different ARPA: mps@duke.cs.duke.edu one from that of the unhappy man." Wittgenstein
jds@duke.cs.duke.edu (Joseph D. Sloan) (06/24/87)
Martin Gardner devotes a chapter to Ramon Lull in LOGIC, MACHINES AND DIAGRAMS, 2e, 1982, University of Chicago Press. Joe Sloan jds@obcd
edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) (06/24/87)
In article <9810@duke.cs.duke.edu> mps@duke.UUCP (Michael P. Smith) writes:
:
:> A number of people have asked about the reference to AI in the
:> 13th Century. Well I finally dug up the ole notebook and picked
:> it out. Unfortunately all I have is a name. The name is
:>
:Lull, Raymond. 1236-1315.
:I believe that much of Lull's work is available in English translation.
:
:No doubt some interesting comparisons can be drawn between Lull's
:program and, say, conceptual dependency theory. But as to Mark's
:claim that Lull used the term 'artificial intelligence', I suspect
:that such usage occurs only in the mind of the translator.
No. As I said the book was in latin. Of course the words that I thought
were Artificial intelligence (something like artificialus intelligencus)
might mean something completely different in english.
But thanks for the reference.
mark
--
edwards@unix.macc.wisc.edu
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!edwards
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706stampe@uhccux.UUCP (David Stampe) (06/25/87)
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.44.8 of Wed May 20 1987 on uhccux (berkeley-unix)
The nine questions of Ramon Lull's Ars Magna (whether? what? whence?
why? how large? of what kind? when? where? how?) seem to be what were
called the "modes of being" in the grammatical theories of the
"Modistae" during the middle ages. They were based ultimately on
Aristotle's Categories, which have been claimed during this century
(by Ryle?) to have been based on the Greek interrogative pronouns.
Regarding the similarities to conceptual dependency theory, it's
interesting that in *syntactic* dependency theory, in a phrase, it is
only the dependent member (adjunct, modifier, operator) that can be
interrogated vis a vis the independent (head, operand) member, not
vice versa.
Examples, with (Head (Adjunct)), and * for the bad cases:
(Verb (Object)) Q: Who does he like? A: Mary.
*Q: What he Mary? A: Likes her.
((Adj) Noun) Q: Which hat did she wear? A: The straw hat.
*Q: What straw did she wear? A: The hat.
((Adv) Adj) Q: How hot was it? A: Too hot.
*Q: Too what was it? A: Hot.
Etc. Typically the head is implied by the adjunct (e.g. to like Mary
is to like [someone], a straw hat is a hat, too hot is hot). That is,
adjuncts are rather like predicates. That is, they correspond to the
modes of being, the ways things can be.
There's not much new under the sun.
David Stampe, Linguistics, Univ. of Hawaii
uhccux!stampe@nosc.miljbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (06/26/87)
A thorough discussion of the Ars Magna ("Great Art") of Ramon Lull
can be found in Martin Gardner's "Science - Good, Bad and Bogus" (ISBN
0-87975-144-4). The Great Art is basically a system for exhaustively
combining terms, using a stack of disks, each containing a set of related
terms. For example, one set of Lull's disks contained the following words:
1. God, creature, operation
2. difference, similarity, contrariety
3. beginning, middle, end
4. majority, equality, minority
5. affirmation, negation, doubt
In operation, one chooses one term from each set, more or less at random.
One can thus explore, Gardner writes, "such topics as the beginning and
end of God, differences and similarities of animals, and so on."
The Great Art provides no assistance in selecting useful combinations from
the many produced, or for doing anything with them once selected. It
provides only a means for enumerating the possibilities inherent in some
taxonomic scheme. So, while the Great Art may be useful as a prod
for creative thinking by humans, it does not provide anything more profound.
It does, though, generate the illusion of profundity, which provides much of
its appeal.
John Nagle