相关论文: Bolzano's measurable numbers: are they real?

Although Bolzano's concept of the continuum has gradually evolved, the basis remained the same: the continuum as an infinite class of points arranged in such a way that the so-called \emph{Bolzano completeness} holds. Bolzano realized over…

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…

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…

In a paper published in 1970, Grattan-Guinness argued that Cauchy, in his 1821 book Cours d'Analyse, may have plagiarized Bolzano's book Rein analytischer Beweis (RB), first published in 1817. That paper was subsequently discredited in…

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…

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…

The paper introduces the notion of the size of countable sets that preserves the Part-Whole Principle and generalizes the notion of the cardinality of finite sets. The sizes of natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, and all their…

From 1873 to 1897, Georg Cantor worked on developing set theory, and despite a strong initial resistance, it rapidly became accepted as the foundation of mathematics. In this work, however, we'll demonstrate that Cantor's use of infinity is…

19th century real analysis received a major impetus from Cauchy's work. Cauchy mentions variable quantities, limits, and infinitesimals, but the meaning he attached to these terms is not identical to their modern meaning. Some Cauchy…

For any particularly interesting theorem one proof is never enough. Instead, the first proof sets the challenge to find a more elegant method that illuminates subtle features of the math, is simpler to understand, or even avoids using…

It is a ubiquitous opinion among mathematicians that a real number is just a point in the line. If this rough definition is not enough, then a mathematician may provide a formal definition of the real numbers in the set theoretic and…

Cauchy's sum theorem of 1821 has been the subject of rival interpretations ever since Robinson proposed a novel reading in the 1960s. Some claim that Cauchy modified the hypothesis of his theorem in 1853 by introducing uniform convergence,…

Since the theory developed by Georg Cantor, mathematicians have taken a sharp interest in the sizes of infinite sets. We know that the set of integers is infinitely countable and that its cardinality is Aleph0. Cantor proved in 1891 with…

The Boolean ring $B$ of measurable subsets of the unit interval, modulo sets of measure zero, has proper radical ideals (e.g., $\{0\})$ that are closed under the natural metric, but has no prime ideals closed under that metric; hence closed…

We construct a topos in which the Dedekind reals are countable. The topos arises from a new kind of realizability, which we call parameterized realizability, based on partial combinatory algebras whose application depends on a parameter.…

Like his colleagues de Prony, Petit, and Poisson at the Ecole Polytechnique, Cauchy used infinitesimals in the Leibniz-Euler tradition both in his research and teaching. Cauchy applied infinitesimals in an 1826 work in differential geometry…

In recent publications in physics and mathematics, concerns have been raised about the use of real numbers to describe quantities in physics, and in particular about the usual assumption that physical quantities are infinitely precise. In…

In standard formulations of the uncertainty principle, two fundamental features are typically cast as impossibility statements: two noncommuting observables cannot in general both be sharply defined (for the same state), nor can they be…

The uncountability of the real numbers is one of their most basic properties, known (far) outside of mathematics. Cantor's 1874 proof of the uncountability of the real numbers even appears in the very first paper on set theory, i.e. a…

Procedures relying on infinitesimals in Leibniz, Euler and Cauchy have been interpreted in both a Weierstrassian and Robinson's frameworks. The latter provides closer proxies for the procedures of the classical masters. Thus, Leibniz's…