Theory of relations

The first part of this book concerns the present state of the theory of chains (= total or linear orderings), in connection with some refinements of Ramsey's theorem, due to Galvin and Nash-Williams. This leads to the fundamental Laver's embeddability theorem for scattered chains, using Nash-Williams' better quasi-orderings, barriers and forerunning.The second part (chapters 9 to 12) extends to general relations the main notions and results from order-type theory. An important connection appears with permutation theory (Cameron, Pouzet, Livingstone and Wagner) and with logics (existence criter