Related papers: Sizes of Countable Sets
The embracing of actual infinity in mathematics leads naturally to the question of comparing the sizes of infinite collections. The basic dilemma is that the Cantor Principle (CP), according to which two sets have the same size if there is…
Bolzano and Cantor were the first mathematicians to make significant attempts to measure the size (numerosity) of different infinite collections. They differed in their methodological approaches, with Cantor's prevailing. This led to the…
This thesis presents an alternative to Cantor's theory of cardinality, insofar as that is understood as a theory of set size. The alternative is based on a general theory, ClassSize. ClassSize contains all sentences in the first order…
We discuss two main ways in comparing and evaluating the size of sets: the "Cantorian" way, grounded on the so called Hume principle (two sets have equal size if they are equipotent), and the "Euclidean" way, maintaining Euclid's principle…
We review and compare five ways of assigning totally ordered sizes to subsets of the natural numbers: cardinality, infinite lottery logic with mirror cardinalities, natural density, generalised density, and $\alpha$-numerosity. Generalised…
In his Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds, Georg Cantor praised Bernard Bolzano as a clear defender of actual infinity who had the courage to work with infinite numbers. At the same time, he sharply criticized the way Bolzano…
How many odd numbers are there? How many even numbers? From Galileo to Cantor, the suggestion was that there are the same number of odd, even and natural numbers, because all three sets can be mapped in one-one fashion to each other. This…
Transfinite set theory including the axiom of choice supplies the following basic theorems: (1) Mappings between infinite sets can always be completed, such that at least one of the sets is exhausted. (2) The real numbers can be well…
In which a review of the concept of countability is done in mathematics, subjecting review some of the theorems so far accepted, showing their inconsistency and also taking concrete elements on the countability of all the powers of the set…
We point out that a sequence of natural numbers is the dimension sequence of a subproduct system if and only if it is the cardinality sequence of a word system (or factorial language). Determining such sequences is, therefore, reduced to a…
We describe a theory of finite sets, and investigate the analogue of Dedekind's theory of natural number systems (simply infinite systems) in this theory. Unlike the infinitary case, in our theory, natural number systems come in differing…
We start by presenting a theory of finite sets using the approach which is essentially that taken by Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica}, and which does not involve the natural numbers (or any other infinite set). This theory is…
We consider a notion of "numerosity" for sets of tuples of natural numbers, that satisfies the five common notions of Euclid's Elements, so it can agree with cardinality only for finite sets. By suitably axiomatizing such a notion, we show…
We show that many large cardinal notions up to measurability can be characterized through the existence of certain filters for small models of set theory. This correspondence will allow us to obtain a canonical way in which to assign ideals…
The multiplicative theory of a set of numbers (which could be natural, integer, rational, real or complex numbers) is the first-order theory of the structure of that set with (solely) the multiplication operation (that set is taken to be…
We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is…
Four constructions result from a desire to create enhancements to Cantor's infinite real set cardinality. Each continues to keep Cantor's cardinality formulation in place while providing new comparisons of arbitrary infinite sets. To…
Introducing the notion of a rational system of measure preserving transformations and proving a recurrence result for such systems, we give sufficient conditions in order a subset of rational numbers to contain arbitrary long arithmetic…
In this paper we introduce the concept of completeness of sets. We study this property on the set of integers. We examine how this property is preserved as we carry out various operations compatible with sets. We also introduce the problem…
We obtain algebraic characterizations of relative notions of size in a discrete semigroup that generalize the usual combinatorial notions of syndetic, thick, and piecewise syndetic sets. "Filtered" syndetic and piecewise syndetic sets were…