Primitives

A primitive is something that we can’t define it using something else.

As an example of defining something using something else, consider the following sentence:

“A tiger is a large cat with orange and black stripes”

This sentence defines a tiger as being a cat. This lets you assume many “Cat” things about a Tiger and when you see one in the zoo, you will probably recognize it, because so much of what you see in Tiger is “cat”. Only two things were added to “Cat”, the size and the stripes.

A set is a primitive concept. An element is a primitive concept.

Well, we whisper how that this isn’t completely true, at least not for us. We define a set as being a collection with technical math properties, so in our world, the word collection is the primitive concept…