| Description |
All human being, by virtue of the way we speak, seem to possess an innate ability to draw distinctions. This ability allows us to mentally separate the objects of our thought into collections. Consider: if I am looking at a pile of loose change on a table, it will remain an undifferentiated mass until suddenly I am able to say " there are dimes, nickels, and quarters." Simply by dividing the change into different kinds, I have expressed my ability to distinguish between different collections, or sets of coins. in other words, what I am actually saying is that there are a set of dimes, a set of nickels, and a set of quarters on the table. The need for a theory of sets, then, is a natural outgrowth of the way we talk. |
