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Large Countable Ordinal
In the mathematical discipline of set theory, there are many ways of describing specific countable ordinals. The smallest ones can be usefully and non-circularly expressed in terms of their Cantor normal forms. Beyond that, many ordinals of relevance to proof theory still have computable ordinal notations (see ordinal analysis). However, it is not possible to decide effectively whether a given putative ordinal notation is a notation or not (for reasons somewhat analogous to the unsolvability of the halting problem); various more-concrete ways of defining ordinals that definitely have notations are available. Since there are only countably many notations, all ordinals with notations are exhausted well below the first uncountable ordinal ω1; their supremum is called ''Church–Kleene'' ω1 or ω1CK (not to be confused with the first uncountable ordinal, ω1), described below. Ordinal numbers below ω1CK are the recursive ordinals (see below). Countable ordinals larger than this may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Set Theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly concerned with those that are relevant to mathematics as a whole. The modern study of set theory was initiated by the German mathematicians Richard Dedekind and Georg Cantor in the 1870s. In particular, Georg Cantor is commonly considered the founder of set theory. The non-formalized systems investigated during this early stage go under the name of '' naive set theory''. After the discovery of paradoxes within naive set theory (such as Russell's paradox, Cantor's paradox and the Burali-Forti paradox) various axiomatic systems were proposed in the early twentieth century, of which Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (with or without the axiom of choice) is still the best-known and most studied. Set theory is commonly employed as a foundational ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Cole Kleene
Stephen Cole Kleene ( ; January 5, 1909 – January 25, 1994) was an American mathematician. One of the students of Alonzo Church, Kleene, along with Rózsa Péter, Alan Turing, Emil Post, and others, is best known as a founder of the branch of mathematical logic known as recursion theory, which subsequently helped to provide the foundations of theoretical computer science. Kleene's work grounds the study of computable functions. A number of mathematical concepts are named after him: Kleene hierarchy, Kleene algebra, the Kleene star (Kleene closure), Kleene's recursion theorem and the Kleene fixed-point theorem. He also invented regular expressions in 1951 to describe McCulloch-Pitts neural networks, and made significant contributions to the foundations of mathematical intuitionism. Biography Kleene was awarded a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1930. He was awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1934, where his thesis, entitled ''A Theory of Positi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kripke–Platek Set Theory
The Kripke–Platek set theory (KP), pronounced , is an axiomatic set theory developed by Saul Kripke and Richard Platek. The theory can be thought of as roughly the predicative part of ZFC and is considerably weaker than it. Axioms In its formulation, a Δ0 formula is one all of whose quantifiers are bounded. This means any quantification is the form \forall u \in v or \exist u \in v. (See the Lévy hierarchy.) * Axiom of extensionality: Two sets are the same if and only if they have the same elements. * Axiom of induction: φ(''a'') being a formula, if for all sets ''x'' the assumption that φ(''y'') holds for all elements ''y'' of ''x'' entails that φ(''x'') holds, then φ(''x'') holds for all sets ''x''. * Axiom of empty set: There exists a set with no members, called the empty set and denoted . * Axiom of pairing: If ''x'', ''y'' are sets, then so is , a set containing ''x'' and ''y'' as its only elements. * Axiom of union: For any set ''x'', there is a set ''y'' such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proof-theoretic Strength
In proof theory, ordinal analysis assigns ordinal number, ordinals (often large countable ordinals) to mathematical theories as a measure of their strength. If theories have the same proof-theoretic ordinal they are often equiconsistency, equiconsistent, and if one theory has a larger proof-theoretic ordinal than another it can often prove the consistency of the second theory. History The field of ordinal analysis was formed when Gerhard Gentzen in 1934 used cut elimination to prove, in modern terms, that the proof-theoretic ordinal of Peano arithmetic is epsilon numbers (mathematics), ε0. See Gentzen's consistency proof. Definition Ordinal analysis concerns true, effective (recursive) theories that can interpret a sufficient portion of arithmetic to make statements about ordinal notations. The proof-theoretic ordinal of such a theory T is the supremum of the order type, order types of all ordinal notations (necessarily recursive ordinal, recursive, see next section) that t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goodstein's Theorem
In mathematical logic, Goodstein's theorem is a statement about the natural numbers, proved by Reuben Goodstein in 1944, which states that every ''Goodstein sequence'' eventually terminates at 0. Kirby and Paris showed that it is unprovable in Peano arithmetic (but it can be proven in stronger systems, such as second-order arithmetic). This was the third example of a true statement that is unprovable in Peano arithmetic, after the examples provided by Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Gerhard Gentzen's 1943 direct proof of the unprovability of ε0-induction in Peano arithmetic. The Paris–Harrington theorem gave another example. Laurence Kirby and Jeff Paris introduced a graph-theoretic hydra game with behavior similar to that of Goodstein sequences: the "Hydra" (named for the mythological multi-headed Hydra of Lerna) is a rooted tree, and a move consists of cutting off one of its "heads" (a branch of the tree), to which the hydra responds by growing a finite number of new ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kirby–Paris Theorem
In mathematical logic, Goodstein's theorem is a statement about the natural numbers, proved by Reuben Goodstein in 1944, which states that every ''Goodstein sequence'' eventually terminates at 0. Kirby and Paris showed that it is unprovable in Peano arithmetic (but it can be proven in stronger systems, such as second-order arithmetic). This was the third example of a true statement that is unprovable in Peano arithmetic, after the examples provided by Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Gerhard Gentzen's 1943 direct proof of the unprovability of ε0-induction in Peano arithmetic. The Paris–Harrington theorem gave another example. Laurence Kirby and Jeff Paris introduced a graph-theoretic hydra game with behavior similar to that of Goodstein sequences: the "Hydra" (named for the mythological multi-headed Hydra of Lerna) is a rooted tree, and a move consists of cutting off one of its "heads" (a branch of the tree), to which the hydra responds by growing a finite number of new h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerhard Gentzen
Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen (24 November 1909 – 4 August 1945) was a German mathematician and logician. He made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics, proof theory, especially on natural deduction and sequent calculus. He died of starvation in a Soviet prison camp in Prague in 1945, having been interned as a German national after the Second World War. Life and career Gentzen was a student of Paul Bernays at the University of Göttingen. Bernays was fired as "non-Aryan" in April 1933 and therefore Hermann Weyl formally acted as his supervisor. Gentzen joined the Sturmabteilung in November 1933 although he was by no means compelled to do so. Nevertheless he kept in contact with Bernays until the beginning of the Second World War. In 1935, he corresponded with Abraham Fraenkel in Jerusalem and was implicated by the Nazi teachers' union as one who "keeps contacts to the Chosen People." In 1935 and 1936, Hermann Weyl, head of the Göttingen mathematics department in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epsilon Numbers (mathematics)
In mathematics, the epsilon numbers are a collection of transfinite numbers whose defining property is that they are fixed points of an exponential map. Consequently, they are not reachable from 0 via a finite series of applications of the chosen exponential map and of "weaker" operations like addition and multiplication. The original epsilon numbers were introduced by Georg Cantor in the context of ordinal arithmetic; they are the ordinal numbers ''ε'' that satisfy the equation :\varepsilon = \omega^\varepsilon, \, in which ω is the smallest infinite ordinal. The least such ordinal is ''ε''0 (pronounced epsilon nought or epsilon zero), which can be viewed as the "limit" obtained by transfinite recursion from a sequence of smaller limit ordinals: :\varepsilon_0 = \omega^ = \sup \\,, where is the supremum function, which is equivalent to set union in the case of the von Neumann representation of ordinals. Larger ordinal fixed points of the exponential map are indexed by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First-order Logic
First-order logic—also known as predicate logic, quantificational logic, and first-order predicate calculus—is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects, and allows the use of sentences that contain variables, so that rather than propositions such as "Socrates is a man", one can have expressions in the form "there exists x such that x is Socrates and x is a man", where "there exists''"'' is a quantifier, while ''x'' is a variable. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers or relations; in this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic. A theory about a topic is usually a first-order logic together with a specified domain of discourse (over which the quantified variables range), finitely many functions from that domain to itself, finitely many predicates defined on that domain, and a set of ax ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transfinite Induction
Transfinite induction is an extension of mathematical induction to well-ordered sets, for example to sets of ordinal numbers or cardinal numbers. Its correctness is a theorem of ZFC. Induction by cases Let P(\alpha) be a property defined for all ordinals \alpha. Suppose that whenever P(\beta) is true for all \beta < \alpha, then is also true. Then transfinite induction tells us that is true for all ordinals. Usually the proof is broken down into three cases: * Zero case: Prove that is true. * Successor case: Prove that for any , follows from (and, if necessary, for all ). * Limit case: Prove that for any |
Peano Axioms
In mathematical logic, the Peano axioms, also known as the Dedekind–Peano axioms or the Peano postulates, are axioms for the natural numbers presented by the 19th century Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano. These axioms have been used nearly unchanged in a number of metamathematical investigations, including research into fundamental questions of whether number theory is consistent and complete. The need to formalize arithmetic was not well appreciated until the work of Hermann Grassmann, who showed in the 1860s that many facts in arithmetic could be derived from more basic facts about the successor operation and induction. In 1881, Charles Sanders Peirce provided an axiomatization of natural-number arithmetic. In 1888, Richard Dedekind proposed another axiomatization of natural-number arithmetic, and in 1889, Peano published a simplified version of them as a collection of axioms in his book, ''The principles of arithmetic presented by a new method'' ( la, Arithmet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
