Types - Definition and Overview

Type has historically had the following uses:

• In biology, a type is the specimen or specimens upon which an original species description is based.

• In computer science, a datatype (sometimes referred to as a 'type') is a collection of values used for computation.

• In printing, type refers to the metal forms of the letters used in typesetting.

• In sociology, the terms normal type and ideal type are used.

• In the decades of the 1900s and 1910s, in philosophy, Bertrand Russell used his Theory of Types to further discuss the mapping of mathematics to logic. See Principia Mathematica

• In set theory and musical set theory, see equivalence class.

• In intuitionistic type theory, a type can be a proposition or a set.

• In biblical theology, a type is something in the Bible which foreshadows things to come.

See also: Typology, the study of types.