From Cardone, Hindley "History of Lambda-calculus and Combinatory Logic"[1]:
"(By the way, why did Church choose the notation “λ”? In [Church, 1964, §2] he stated clearly that it came from the notation “ˆ x” used for class-abstraction by Whitehead and Russell, by first modifying “ˆ x” to “∧x” to distinguish function-abstraction from class-abstraction, and then changing “∧” to “λ” for ease of printing. This origin was also reported in [Rosser, 1984, p.338]. On the other hand, in his later years Church told two enquirers that the choice was more accidental: a symbol was needed and “λ” just happened to be chosen.)" [1] http://www-maths.swan.ac.uk/staff/jrh/papers/JRHHislamWeb.pdf -- Niklas 2011/8/21 Christopher Done <chrisd...@googlemail.com>: > IIRC Church found it easy to write on paper. > > On 21 August 2011 21:11, Jack Henahan <jhena...@uvm.edu> wrote: >> The short answer is "because Church said so". But yes, it is basically >> because λ is the abstraction operator in the calculus. >> >> Why not alpha or beta calculus? What would we call alpha and beta >> conversion, then? :D >> >> On Aug 21, 2011, at 12:37 PM, C K Kashyap wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> Can someone please tell me what is the root of the name lambda calculus? Is >>> it just because of the symbol lambda that is used? >>> Why not alpha or beta calculus? >>> Regards, >>> Kashyap >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list >>> Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org >>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe >> >> Jack Henahan >> jhena...@uvm.edu >> == >> Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about >> telescopes. >> -- Edsger Dijkstra >> == >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Haskell-Cafe mailing list >> Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org >> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
