History
As explained before, orders are ubiquitous in mathematics. However, earliest explicit mentionings of partial orders are probably to be found not before the 19th century. In this context the works of George Boole are of great importance. Moreover, works of Charles Sanders Peirce, Richard Dedekind, and Ernst Schröder also consider concepts of order theory. Certainly, there are others to be named in this context and surely there exists more detailed material on the history of order theory.
The term poset as an abbreviation for partially ordered set was coined by Garrett Birkhoff in the second edition of his influential book Lattice Theory.
Read more about this topic: Order Theory
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)