Re: Lisp history: IF, etc.

Jeff Barnett <jbb@notatt.com> writes:

might produce
   Did the Queen know TRUE?

This is a topic in philosophy of language (idr what it is called).
Mathematical logic is completely different.  By that, I mean you could
go to any university math library in the 1960s (when McCarthy was
active) or today, and find shelves full of textbooks with "mathematical
logic" in their titles.  Those would all be about facets of the same
subject.  Noted authors in it were people like Church (inventor of
lambda calculus), Curry (currying and the Haskell language are named
after him), Tarski, and so on.  McCarthy's work was in tangentially
related areas.

McCarthy was super smart and probably could have read those textbooks
and gotten to understand the subject fairly easily, but not that many
mathematicians were into it back then.  So I don't think he spent his
time that way.  That's what I mean by saying he worked in different
areas.

I only met McCarthy once, and unfortunately, the only topic I remember
from the conversation had something to do with Chinese food.