|
Richard's Paradox
In logic, Richard's paradox is a semantical antinomy of set theory and natural language first described by the French mathematician Jules Richard in 1905. The paradox is ordinarily used to motivate the importance of distinguishing carefully between mathematics and metamathematics. Kurt Gödel specifically cites Richard's antinomy as a semantical analogue to his syntactical incompleteness result in the introductory section of " On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I". The paradox was also a motivation for the development of predicative mathematics. Description The original statement of the paradox, due to Richard (1905), is strongly related to Cantor's diagonal argument on the uncountability of the set of real numbers. The paradox begins with the observation that certain expressions of natural language define real numbers unambiguously, while other expressions of natural language do not. For example, "The real number the integer pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. While there is no general agreement on how formal and informal logic are to be distinguished, one prominent approach associates their difference with whether the studied arguments are expressed in formal or informal languages. Logic plays a central role in multiple fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion. Premises and conclusions are usually un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solomon Feferman
Solomon Feferman (December 13, 1928 – July 26, 2016) was an American philosopher and mathematician who worked in mathematical logic. Life Solomon Feferman was born in The Bronx in New York City to working-class parents who had immigrated to the United States after World War I and had met and married in New York. Neither parent had any advanced education. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Feferman graduated from high school at age 16. He received his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology in 1948, and in 1957 his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, under Alfred Tarski, after having been drafted and having served in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 he was appointed to the Departments of Mathematics and Philosophy at Stanford University, where he later became the Patrick Suppes Professor of Humanities and Sciences. Feferman died on 26 July 2016 at his home in Stanford, following an illness that lasted three months and a stroke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Real Analysis
In mathematics, the branch of real analysis studies the behavior of real numbers, sequences and series of real numbers, and real functions. Some particular properties of real-valued sequences and functions that real analysis studies include convergence, limits, continuity, smoothness, differentiability and integrability. Real analysis is distinguished from complex analysis, which deals with the study of complex numbers and their functions. Scope Construction of the real numbers The theorems of real analysis rely on the properties of the real number system, which must be established. The real number system consists of an uncountable set (\mathbb), together with two binary operations denoted and , and an order denoted . The operations make the real numbers a field, and, along with the order, an ordered field. The real number system is the unique ''complete ordered field'', in the sense that any other complete ordered field is isomorphic to it. Intuitively, completeness means ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, (; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is associated with the University of Göttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by Carl Friedrich Gauss, David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski. His research has had major significance for theoretical physics as well as purely mathematical disciplines such as number theory. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century, and an important member of the Institute for Advanced Study during its early years. Weyl contributed to an exceptionally wide range of mathematical fields, including works on space, time, matter, philosophy, logic, symmetry and the history of mathematics. He was one of the first to conceive of combining general relativity with the laws of electromagnetism. Freeman Dyson wrote that Weyl alone bore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundations Of Mathematics
Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophy, philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the nature of mathematics. In this latter sense, the distinction between foundations of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics turns out to be quite vague. Foundations of mathematics can be conceived as the study of the basic mathematical concepts (set, function, geometrical figure, number, etc.) and how they form hierarchies of more complex structures and concepts, especially the fundamentally important structures that form the language of mathematics (formulas, theories and their model theory, models giving a meaning to formulas, definitions, proofs, algorithms, etc.) also called metamathematics, metamathematical concepts, with an eye to the philosophical aspects and the unity of mathematics. The search for foundations of mathematics is a cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predicativism
In mathematics, logic and philosophy of mathematics, something that is impredicative is a self-referencing definition. Roughly speaking, a definition is impredicative if it invokes (mentions or quantifies over) the set being defined, or (more commonly) another set that contains the thing being defined. There is no generally accepted precise definition of what it means to be predicative or impredicative. Authors have given different but related definitions. The opposite of impredicativity is predicativity, which essentially entails building stratified (or ramified) theories where quantification over lower levels results in variables of some new type, distinguished from the lower types that the variable ranges over. A prototypical example is intuitionistic type theory, which retains ramification so as to discard impredicativity. Russell's paradox is a famous example of an impredicative construction—namely the set of all sets that do not contain themselves. The paradox is that suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Number
In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country"). Numbers used for counting are called ''Cardinal number, cardinal numbers'', and numbers used for ordering are called ''Ordinal number, ordinal numbers''. Natural numbers are sometimes used as labels, known as ''nominal numbers'', having none of the properties of numbers in a mathematical sense (e.g. sports Number (sports), jersey numbers). Some definitions, including the standard ISO/IEC 80000, ISO 80000-2, begin the natural numbers with , corresponding to the non-negative integers , whereas others start with , corresponding to the positive integers Texts that exclude zero from the natural numbers sometimes refer to the natural numbers together with zero as the whole numbers, while in other writings, that term is used instead for the integers (including negative integers). The natural ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Map (mathematics)
In mathematics, a map or mapping is a function in its general sense. These terms may have originated as from the process of making a geographical map: ''mapping'' the Earth surface to a sheet of paper. The term ''map'' may be used to distinguish some special types of functions, such as homomorphisms. For example, a linear map is a homomorphism of vector spaces, while the term linear function may have this meaning or it may mean a linear polynomial. In category theory, a map may refer to a morphism. The term ''transformation'' can be used interchangeably, but ''transformation'' often refers to a function from a set to itself. There are also a few less common uses in logic and graph theory. Maps as functions In many branches of mathematics, the term ''map'' is used to mean a function, sometimes with a specific property of particular importance to that branch. For instance, a "map" is a " continuous function" in topology, a "linear transformation" in linear algebra, etc. Some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axiom
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident'. The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question. As used in modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning. As used in mathematics, the term ''axiom'' is used in two related but distinguishable senses: "logical axioms" and "non-logical axioms". Logical axioms are usually statements that are taken to be true within the system of logic they define and are often shown in symbolic form (e.g., (''A'' and ''B'') implies ''A''), while non-logical axioms (e.g., ) are actually ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deductive System
A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. These rules, which are used for carrying out the inference of theorems from axioms, are the logical calculus of the formal system. A formal system is essentially an "axiomatic system". In 1921, David Hilbert proposed to use such a system as the foundation for the knowledge in mathematics. A formal system may represent a well-defined system of abstract thought. The term ''formalism'' is sometimes a rough synonym for ''formal system'', but it also refers to a given style of notation, for example, Paul Dirac's bra–ket notation. Background Each formal system is described by primitive symbols (which collectively form an alphabet) to finitely construct a formal language from a set of axioms through inferential rules of formation. The system thus consists of valid formulas built up through finite combinations of the primitive symbols—combinations that are formed fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Number
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways of writing it as a product, or , involve 5 itself. However, 4 is composite because it is a product (2 × 2) in which both numbers are smaller than 4. Primes are central in number theory because of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every natural number greater than 1 is either a prime itself or can be factorized as a product of primes that is unique up to their order. The property of being prime is called primality. A simple but slow method of checking the primality of a given number n, called trial division, tests whether n is a multiple of any integer between 2 and \sqrt. Faster algorithms include the Miller–Rabin primality test, which is fast but has a small chance of error, and the AKS primality test, which always pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
