Related papers: Commuting and noncommuting infinitesimals
This is a survey of several approaches to the framework for working with infinitesimals and infinite numbers, originally developed by Abraham Robinson in the 1960s, and their constructive engagement with the Cantor-Dedekind postulate and…
Many historians of the calculus deny significant continuity between infinitesimal calculus of the 17th century and 20th century developments such as Robinson's theory. Robinson's hyperreals, while providing a consistent theory of…
Abraham Robinson's framework for modern infinitesimals was developed half a century ago. It enables a re-evaluation of the procedures of the pioneers of mathematical analysis. Their procedures have been often viewed through the lens of the…
The presence of infinitesimals is traced back to some of the most general algebraic structures, namely, semigroups, and in fact, magmas, [1], in which none of the structures of linear order, field, or the Archimedean property need to be…
We show that the field of complex numbers $\mathbb C$ contains non-zero infinitesimals by observing that $\mathbb C$ contains non-Archimedean subfields. Our observation is based on an old theorem in algebra due to E. Steinitz, discussed in…
In this paper, I advance an original view of the structure of space called \textit{Infinitesimal Gunk}. This view says that every region of space can be further divided and some regions have infinitesimal size, where infinitesimals are…
Leibniz entertained various conceptions of infinitesimals, considering them sometimes as ideal things and other times as fictions. But in both cases, he compares infinitesimals favorably to imaginary roots. We agree with the majority of…
Part 1 : For more than two millennia, ever since Euclid's geometry, the so called Archimedean Axiom has been accepted without sufficiently explicit awareness of that fact. The effect has been a severe restriction of our views of space-time,…
In the 16th century, Simon Stevin initiated a modern approach to decimal representation of measuring numbers, marking a transition from the discrete arithmetic practised by the Greeks to the arithmetic of the continuum taken for granted…
In a previous article we gave the general foundations of the theory of movement considered from a philosophical and mathematical point of view. Philosophical it meant to understand the opposition of the one and the multiple, mathematically…
We give an overview of the applications of noncommutative geometry to physics. Our focus is entirely on the conceptual ideas, rather than on the underlying technicalities. Starting historically from the Heisenberg relations, we will explain…
Infinitesimals have seen ups and downs in their tumultuous history. In the 18th century, d'Alembert set the tone by describing infinitesimals as chimeras. Some adversaries of infinitesimals, including Moigno and Connes, picked up on the…
In [1], Connes presented axioms governing noncommutative geometry. He went on to claim that when specialised to the commutative case, these axioms recover spin or spin^c geometry depending on whether the geometry is ''real'' or not. We…
I am going to compare well-known properties of infinite words with those of infinite permutations, a new object studied since middle 2000s. Basically, it was Sergey Avgustinovich who invented this notion, although in an early study by Davis…
We examine some of Connes' criticisms of Robinson's infinitesimals starting in 1995. Connes sought to exploit the Solovay model S as ammunition against non-standard analysis, but the model tends to boomerang, undercutting Connes' own…
We discuss the repercussions of the development of infinitesimal calculus into modern analysis, beginning with viewpoints expressed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and relating them to the natural cognitive development of…
We introduce the ring of Fermat reals, an extension of the real field containing nilpotent infinitesimals. The construction takes inspiration from Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis (SIA), but provides a powerful theory of actual infinitesimals…
Non-Archimedean mathematics is an approach based on fields which contain infinitesimal and infinite elements. Within this approach, we construct a space of a particular class of generalized functions, ultrafunctions. The space of…
Cantor's famous construction of the real continuum in terms of Cauchy sequences of rationals proceeds by imposing a suitable equivalence relation. More generally, the completion of a metric space starts from an analogous equivalence…
A refinement of the classic equivalence relation among Cauchy sequences yields a useful infinitesimal-enriched number system. Such an approach can be seen as formalizing Cauchy's sentiment that a null sequence "becomes" an infinitesimal. We…