Index talk:Russell, Whitehead - Principia Mathematica, vol. I, 1910.djvu

In case anybody picks up on proofing or validating this work and finds themselves asking "What were they thinking?", this is an attempt to answer some of those as-yet-unasked questions. As to whether I am thinking, I shall leave that answer to any philosopher/psychiatrists out there&hellip; Of course, no assumption must be made that any approach espoused here is necessarily the best way, and I welcome improvements and useful suggestions&hellip; In the following discussion please do not take my occasional lapse into definitive language as binding upon subsequent proofreaders. This is merely a record of my personal choices regarding this work to date, and I shall attempt (and sincerely beseech others) to amend these notes to reflect any later thoughts regarding basic approach.

Overall Styling

 * Heavy use has been made of p in proofing this work. This has had the effect of permitting:
 * centre may be used as a kind of inline (in-paragraph?) mode entity (on the reasoning that the enclosing paragraph continues after the centred section.)
 * As formulae are so prevalent in this work, all &lt;math&gt; strings are enclosed in \scriptstyle{} blocks to better reflect the inline nature of the expressions and to avoid $$\text{the over-excited look}$$ which might otherwise result from the $$\text{default}$$ $\scriptstyle{\text{presentation}}$.|undefined
 * At the suggestion of Abjiklɐm, for consistency all textual references of the form "*(number)" ought to be expressed using as distinctive typographically (tentatively using: "eight pointed black star":  which renders as "&#x2734;(number)" using above sample fragment.) For a real example see Page:Russell, Whitehead - Principia Mathematica, vol. I, 1910.djvu/23. Needs a symbol that also works inside math tags.

Symbols

 * General:Russell and Whitehead were clearly evolving their symbolism at the time of this work, with the result many of their symbol choices look peculiar to more modern students of logic (in particular use of "$\scriptstyle{\supset}$" instead of "$\scriptstyle{\Rightarrow}$" jars with me.) By attempting to match the typography of the scanned image results in some apparently discordant LaTex expressions appearing in the wikicode&hellip;
 * The original publication uses m-dashes in formulae to represent the concept of negation. However as this symbol is not (readily) representable inside &lt;math&gt; expressions, substitution with \lnot ($\scriptstyle{\lnot}$) is suggested as a compromise.
 * I could find no simple equivalent to R&W's inverted-iota which would work within &lt;math&gt; strings. and so have had to resort to breaking up formulae where necessary. I now know that use of the Unicode &amp;#8489; sequence is possibly not acceptable in all browsers.

General Notes

 * &lt;math&gt; expressions currently appear to be wrapped by mediawiki without regard to immediately adjacent punctuation. To avoid this situation I suggest wrapping all candidate fragments using nowrap. (Occurrences near to the start of a new paragraph; or already enclosed by centre or variants may be considered as unlikely to be subject to wrapping and may be left subject to the default behaviour.)