I love the fact that our precious λ symbol (for function abstraction) arose due to a series of typographical errors: www-users.mat.umk.pl/~adwid/materia
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A mathematician went to a typesetter that couldn't typeset a circumflex? This story seems a little tall to me
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I remember hearing a talk by Dana Scott where he said that indeed this is a tall tale, and that Church chose the λ just because...he needed a letter. (Maybe somebody knows where to find this talk online?)
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This explanation was suggested by somebody else on here too:
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Replying to @brendanzab and @ndm_haskell
I’d heard that it was because all letters earlier in Greek alphabet had been used. Alpha, beta, ...