Seeking English equivalent of a certain German word
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From: Dave L. Renfro on 28 Jan 2010 09:53 I am seeking an English word or phrase equivalent for the German word "Weitenbehaftungen" that was used by the German mathematician/philosopher Friedrich Jacob [Jakob] Kurt Geissler [Geißler] (1859-1941) I am not particularly interested in his theories on infinity and infinitesimals (which were widely criticized around 1903 through the 1910s on several grounds, one of which was his lack of knowledge of then modern mathematical developments that related to his work), but rather I simply want to come up with a reasonable English version for the title of one of his papers: Die Asymptote und die Weitenbehaftungen Thanks, Dave L. Renfro
From: Herman Jurjus on 28 Jan 2010 10:53 Dave L. Renfro wrote: > I am seeking an English word or phrase equivalent for > the German word "Weitenbehaftungen" that was used by > the German mathematician/philosopher > > Friedrich Jacob [Jakob] Kurt Geissler [Gei�ler] (1859-1941) > > I am not particularly interested in his theories on infinity > and infinitesimals (which were widely criticized around 1903 > through the 1910s on several grounds, one of which was his lack > of knowledge of then modern mathematical developments that > related to his work), but rather I simply want to come up with > a reasonable English version for the title of one of his papers: > > Die Asymptote und die Weitenbehaftungen > > Thanks, > > Dave L. Renfro Have you tried posting this to the ng de.sci.mathematik ? -- Cheers, Herman Jurjus
From: christian.bau on 28 Jan 2010 11:07 On Jan 28, 2:53 pm, "Dave L. Renfro" <renfr...(a)cmich.edu> wrote: > Die Asymptote und die Weitenbehaftungen I'd say it is a word that Mr. Geißler made up. Google search shows it _only_ when referring to his paper. Try to find some nebulous, content free word that would roughly correspond to the size of an object (like a point, line, or infinity). "sizal modes" or something meaningless like that. "Haftung" = stickiness or attachment, like what holds wallpaper to a wall is "Haftung". "Behaftung" = meaningless modification of the word Haftung. "Weite" = similar to width or size. "Weiten" would be plural, but very unusual to use. Looks like the word is mostly meant to sound good and "philosophical" and to demonstrate that Mr. Geißler is more clever than the reader for using words that the reader doesn't know.
From: Gottfried Helms on 28 Jan 2010 11:10 Am 28.01.2010 15:53 schrieb Dave L. Renfro: > I am seeking an English word or phrase equivalent for > the German word "Weitenbehaftungen" that was used by > the German mathematician/philosopher > > Friedrich Jacob [Jakob] Kurt Geissler [Gei�ler] (1859-1941) > > I am not particularly interested in his theories on infinity > and infinitesimals (which were widely criticized around 1903 > through the 1910s on several grounds, one of which was his lack > of knowledge of then modern mathematical developments that > related to his work), but rather I simply want to come up with > a reasonable English version for the title of one of his papers: > > Die Asymptote und die Weitenbehaftungen > > Thanks, > > Dave L. Renfro It is a very unusual word (to say the least). I suspect, he constructed it from some property, which is obscure to me so far. Do you have an online reference (for instance digitized in some math-journal-archive) or at least an abstract? Gottfried
From: Herman Jurjus on 28 Jan 2010 11:28
Gottfried Helms wrote: > Am 28.01.2010 15:53 schrieb Dave L. Renfro: >> I am seeking an English word or phrase equivalent for >> the German word "Weitenbehaftungen" that was used by >> the German mathematician/philosopher >> >> Friedrich Jacob [Jakob] Kurt Geissler [Gei�ler] (1859-1941) >> >> I am not particularly interested in his theories on infinity >> and infinitesimals (which were widely criticized around 1903 >> through the 1910s on several grounds, one of which was his lack >> of knowledge of then modern mathematical developments that >> related to his work), but rather I simply want to come up with >> a reasonable English version for the title of one of his papers: >> >> Die Asymptote und die Weitenbehaftungen >> >> Thanks, >> >> Dave L. Renfro > > It is a very unusual word (to say the least). I suspect, he > constructed it from some property, which is obscure to me so far. > Do you have an online reference (for instance digitized in > some math-journal-archive) or at least an abstract? > > Gottfried There is one text of his in www.archive.org: "Die Grundsaetze und des Wesen des Unendlichen in der Mathematik und Philosophie" von Kurt Geissler, Teubner, Leipzig 1902. My first impression is that it's a word that only Geissler used, that it is very specific to his theory, and that it means something like 'scale', 'order of magnitude', where the latter includes infinite and infinitesimal orders of magnitude (think first order differential, second order differential, etc, but also different speeds of convergence and divergence). I'm afraid this is still not very helpful. But surely a native speaker of German will be of greater help. Would it be an option to leave the term untranslated, btw? -- Cheers, Herman Jurjus |