Am Donnerstag 18 Februar 2010 17:10:08 schrieb Nick Rudnick:
Hi Daniel,
;-)) agreed, but is the word «Ring» itself in use?
Of course, many people wear rings on their fingers. Oh - you meant "in the sense of gang/group"? It still appears as part of the name of some groups as a word of its own, otherwise, I can at the moment only recall its use in compounds.
The same about the English language... de.wikipedia says:
« Die Namensgebung /Ring/ bezieht sich nicht auf etwas anschaulich Ringförmiges, sondern auf einen organisierten Zusammenschluss von Elementen zu einem Ganzen.
I don't know whether that's correct. It may be, but then the french "anneau" is a horrible mistranslation.
Diese Wortbedeutung ist in der deutschen Sprache ansonsten weitgehend verloren gegangen. Einige ältereVereinsbezeichnungen (wie z. B. Deutscher Ring , Weißer Ring ) oder Ausdrücke wie „Verbrecherring“ weisen noch auf diese Bedeutung hin. Das Konzept des Ringes geht auf Richard Dedekind zurück; die Bezeichnung /Ring/ wurde allerdings von David Hilbert eingeführt.» (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringtheorie)
How many students are wondering confused about what is «the hollow» in a ring every year worlwide, since Hilbert made this unreflected wording,
You know, a "field" is a "Körper" in german, ("corps" in french), a "Ring" is a "Körper" with a hole in it (no division in general).
by just picking another term around «collection»? Although not a mathematician, I've visited several maths lectures, for interest, having the same problem. Then I began asking everybody I could reach -- and even maths professors could not tell me why this thing is called a «ring».
That's often a problem with things that were named by Germans in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. They had pretty undecipherable ways of choosing metaphors and coming up with weird associations.
Thanks for your examples: A «gang» {of smugglers|car thieves} shows even the original meaning -- once knowed -- does not reflect the characteristics of the mathematical structure.
Cheers,
Nick
Daniel Fischer wrote:
Am Donnerstag 18 Februar 2010 14:48:08 schrieb Nick Rudnick:
even in Germany, where the term «ring» seems to originate from, since at least a century nowbody has the least idea it once had an alternative meaning «gang,band,group»,
Wrong. The term "Ring" is still in use with that meaning in composites like Schmugglerring, Autoschieberring, ...