Lecture notes from a series given by
George Spencer Brown in 1963

Richard H. Pickard

The notes referenced from this page are my own handwritten notes taken during the lecture series. I have no record of the title of the lecture series or the actual date; Brown's book was called Laws of Form.

There were 12 lectures in the series: the first six expounded the material informally and with lots of illustrations; the second six repeated and extended the material and did so with a high degree of mathematical rigour and new material.

These later lectures were more rigorous and harder for me to understand ... my notes became more scrappy. If you would like any assistance in decoding my handwriting, just e-mail me with the page number and a description of what you see; I'll try and help out.

Since this: http://lawsofform.org/patents/index.html; went on the lawsofform site, I've had a look. I was interested to see that the use of "call" - as in "call a lift" - comes back as the key word in the second axiom. See the first and second pages of lecture notes below.

I have now (July '05) scanned all the material from the lectures. If you have visited this page before you will see that I have slightly reformatted the list and extended the collection of notes to include the last five lectures.

Preparing these pages has taken me back to the classroom in one of the Gordon Square houses behind Univerity College London where I was a postgraduate student of mechanical engineering. Brown came across as a rather stern academic: terse in response to questions, preferring to turn any question back on the student. I found the later material difficult but continued attending the series and making notes out of straightforward fascination.

The 8" by 10" pages have been scanned at 150dpi and saved as jpg files with middle quality. The files are between 72 and 125 Kbytes each, for a total of about 4.2Mbytes.

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Lecture/Page
 Comments
1/0
 This introductory page seems to consist of a copy of Brown's first blackboard sketches which ...
1/1
 ... he followed up with a slightly more formal start.
1/2
 (bottom of page) C.O.D. stands for Concise Oxford Dictionary.
1/3
  
1/4
  
2/1 - once
2/1 - twice
 (confused page numbering)
2/2
  
2/3
 (meaning of pencil figures? don't know)
4/1
 The whole of lecture 3 is missing. Derivation of the meaning of the cross operator given.
4/2
  
opposite 4/2
  
5/1
 This lecture consisted mainly of examples of working the form, with little discussion.
back of 5.1
  
5/2
  
5/3
  
5/4
  
5/5
  
5/6
  
6/1
 A restatement of lecture 1.
6/2 and 7/1
 Another restatement of lecture 1; this is where the rigour starts.
back of 7/1
  
7/2
  
7/3
  
7/4
  
7/5
  
7/6
 Handwriting already getting untidy.

Second series of pages starts here
back of 7/6
8.1
 Diagram for 8.1.
Distiguishing of demonstrations and proofs
1. Theorem of Form, Primary arithmetic
(abbreviation xpr means expression)
8.2
 2. Theorem of Content
back of 8.2
  
8.3
 3. Agreement
end of 8.3 and 9.1

4. The Theorem of Distinction
9.2
 5. The Theorem of Identity
6. The Theorem of value
7. The Theorem of Consequence
back of 9.2
  
9.3
 8. Absolute Value
9. Relative Value
9.4
  
10,1
 Proof of Sheffer's postulates
10.2
  
back of 10.2
 Theorem (Bridge)
I think the sentence finishes "... they [the expressions] are equivalent"
10.3
 Principle of Relevance
11.1
 Theorem 10. The Bridge
12.1
  
back of 12.1
  
12.2
  

 

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