XIV.
Professor Carr finished his inspection of the first of the five sheets.
"Yes," he said, "these are undoubtedly equations in symbolic logic."
Norman had been pretty sure they were, but he was glad to hear a mathematician say so. The hurried reference he had made to Principia Mathematica had not altogether satisfied him.
"The capitals stand for classes of entities, the lower case letter for relationships," he said helpfully.
"Ah ... yes—" Professor Carr's voice became a trifle diffident, and he rubbed his chin beneath the white Vandyke. "But what do they ... refer to ... if I may ask?"
"You could perform operations on the equations, couldn't you, without knowing the references of the individual symbols?" Norman countered,
"Most certainly. And the results would be valid—always providing that the original references had been made correctly."
"Then here's my problem," Norman went on hastily. "There are seventeen equations on that first sheet. As they stand, they are not consistent with each other. Now I'm wondering if one simple, underlying equation doesn't appear in each of the seventeen, jumbled up with a lot of nonessential terms and meaningless procedures. Each of the other sheets presents a similar problem."
"Hm-m-m—" Professor Carr began to finger a pencil, and his eyes started to go back to the intriguing sheet, but he checked the movement. "I must confess I'm rather curious about those references," he said, and added innocently, "I wasn't aware that there had been attempts to apply symbolic logic to sociology."