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A Brief Introduction
Let’s start from the beginning. Long time ago, a french philosopher named Denis Diderot had a bright idea to put all the knowledge in the world in one single book, which nowadays many of you know as encyclopaedia.
Since the 17th century (probably even earlier times) people have tried to gather information and represent it in an easily accessible way. But what is the meaning of information one would ask? Why are people better at understanding it in comparisons to machines?
This is where Ancient Greece comes in and introduces us with the terms of syntax and semantics which help form today’s understanding of information.
Semantics (or if you want to be fancy sēmantikós) — defines the meaning of things. It helps making sense of concepts based on syntax rules.
Syntax (this one you can google) — defines the structure of sentences. Of course, structure varies in different languages.
In most cases, knowing the syntax and semantics is not enough. Just think of a jaguar for example or simply ask Google. Are you imagining a car or an animal? What did Google show? This is an example of why we need more than…
