more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Neither a flock of birds nor a pack of wolves is strictly a set, since a flock can fly south, and a pack can be on the prowl, whereas sets go nowhere and menace no one.
Gist of Idea
A flock of birds is not a set, because a set cannot go anywhere
Source
James Robert Brown (Philosophy of Mathematics [1999], Ch. 7)
Book Ref
Brown,James Robert: 'Philosophy of Mathematics' [Routledge 2002], p.97
A Reaction
To say that the pack menaced you would presumably be to commit the fallacy of composition. Doesn't the number 64 have properties which its set-theoretic elements (whatever we decide they are) will lack?
| 8625 | What physical facts could underlie 0 or 1, or very large numbers? [Frege on Mill] |
| 8469 | Russell's proposal was that only meaningful predicates have sets as their extensions [Russell, by Orenstein] |
| 21693 | Russell's antinomy challenged the idea that any condition can produce a set [Quine] |
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| 9984 | We can have a series with identical members [Tait] |
| 17837 | Zermelo allows ur-elements, to enable the widespread application of set-theory [Hallett,M] |
| 8755 | Maddy replaces pure sets with just objects and perceived sets of objects [Maddy, by Shapiro] |
| 17824 | The master science is physical objects divided into sets [Maddy] |
| 9571 | ZFU refers to the physical world, when it talks of 'urelements' [Chihara] |
| 9642 | A flock of birds is not a set, because a set cannot go anywhere [Brown,JR] |