Mereotopology
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Recent papers in Mereotopology
In the analysis of Anaxagoras' physics in view of the relation between his teachings on multitude and heterogeneity, two central questions emerge: 1) How can the structure of the universe considered purely mereo-topologically help us... more
Alfred North Whitehead, Le Principe de relativité et ses applications en physique [The Principle of Relativity. With application to Physical Science, 1922]. Traduction de Henri Vaillant relue par Sylviane Schwer, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les... more
"Michel Weber and Will Desmond, (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008. (695 p. + 726 p. ; ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 ; 398 €) Gathering 115 entries written by 101... more
"Guillaume Durand et Michel Weber (éditeurs), Les principes de la connaissance naturelle d’Alfred North Whitehead — Alfred North Whitehead’s Principles of Natural Knowledge. Actes des Journées d’étude internationales tenues à l’Université... more
In this chapter, I examine two types of Slavic derived collective nouns, namely spatial collectives such as Polish kwiecie 'clump of flowers' and social collectives like duchowieństwo 'collective of priests, clergy'. While the former... more
"Alan Van Wyk and Michel Weber (eds.), Creativity and Its Discontents. The Response to Whitehead's Process and Reality, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought VIII, 2008. (240 p. ; ISBN 978-3-86838-018-7 ; 89 €) “I do not... more
Euclid’s definition of a point as “that which has no part” has been a major source of controversy in relation to the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of classical geometry, from the medieval and modern disputes on... more
A critical survey of the fundamental philosophical issues in the logic and formal ontology of space, with special emphasis on the interplay between mereology (the theory of parthood relations), topology (broadly understood as a theory of... more
Mereological atomism is the thesis that everything is ultimately composed of atomic parts, i.e., parts lacking proper parts. Standardly, this thesis is characterized by an axiom that says, more simply, that everything has atomic parts.... more
It is customary practice to define ‘x is composed of the ys’ as ‘x is a sum of the ys and the ys are pairwise disjoint (i.e., no two of them have any parts in common)’. This predicate has played a central role in the debate on the special... more
"Nicholas Rescher, Essais sur les fondements de l'ontologie du procès. Traduit de l’anglais et préfacé par Michel Weber. Traduction relue par l’auteur, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Chromatiques whiteheadiennes IX, 2006.... more
In standard lattice-theoretic approaches to natural language (e.g., Link 1983, Land-man 2000, Champollion 2017) singularities and pluralities are presumed to involve two distinct mereological structures and it is commonly supposed that... more
The main aim of this thesis is to contribute to our understanding of quantification in natural language by exploring the so far neglected domain of subatomic quantification, i.e., quantification over parts of building blocks of the... more
Thinking about space is thinking about spatial things. The table is on the carpet; hence the carpet is under the table. The vase is in the box; hence the box is not in the vase. But what does it mean for an object to be somewhere? How are... more
"Although it remains tempting for some scholars to question the interest of a refreshed view on Whitehead's rst epochs or on his later metaphysics, the conjunction of the two dimensions makes it a really rich research area, both to... more
Convexity predicates and the convex hull operator continue to play an important role in theories of spatial representation and reasoning, yet their first-order axiomatization is still a matter of controversy. In this paper, we present a... more
Mereotopology is a concept rooted in analytical philosophy. The phase-field concept is based on mathematical physics and finds applications in materials engineering. The two concepts seem to be disjoint at a first glance. While... more
Boundaries are prominent ingredients of reality, including-most importantly-the boundaries of organisms and the perceived boundaries of things (their surfaces). It is also customary to think of minds as kinds of bounded loci for thoughts,... more
Your left and right hands are now touching each other. This could have been otherwise; but could your hands not be attached to the rest of your body? Sue is now putting the doughnut on the coffee table. She could have left it in the box;... more
I shall begin by introducing the concepts at the heart of topology in an informal and intuitive fashion. Two well-known alternatives present themselves to this end. These prove to be equivalent from the mathematical point of view, but... more
Alfred North Whitehead, Les Principes de la connaissance naturelle [An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, 1919/1925]. Traduction de Henri Vaillant, relue par Sylviane Schwer, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika,... more
This paper gives a isomorphic representation of the subtheories RT − , RT − EC, and RT of Asher and Vieu’s first-order ontology of mereotopology RT0. It corrects and extends previous work on the representation of these mereotopologies. We... more
This is a sequel to Mereology and Beyond. Part I. Contributors: E. D. Bøhn, C. Calosi, P. Forrest, J. D. Hamkins and M. Kikuchi, P. Maffezioli, K. G. Niebergall, K. Robering, and P. M. Simons.
Mereotopology is a concept rooted in analytical philosophy. The phase-field concept is based on mathematical physics and finds applications in materials engineering. The two concepts seem to be disjoint at a first glance. While... more
This paper studies the relationship between set-theoretic mere-topology and quantum theory vis-à-vis the neoliberal project and the systemic crisis of capitalism initiated in the 1970s. In this manner, it is set up a connection between... more
Abstract. This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a... more
The goal of this book is to explore the relationship between the cognitive notion of parthood and various grammatical devices expressing this concept in natural language. The monograph aims to investigate syntactic constructions and... more
Mereology stands for the philosophical concept of parthood and is based on a sound set of fundamental axioms and relations. One of these axioms relates to the “existence of a universe as a thing having part all other things.” The present... more