The arithmetization of analysis was a research program in the
foundations of mathematics
Foundations of mathematics is the study of the 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 mathe ...
carried out in the second half of the 19th century.
History
Kronecker originally introduced the term ''arithmetization of analysis'', by which he meant its constructivization in the context of the natural numbers (see quotation at bottom of page). The meaning of the term later shifted to signify the set-theoretic construction of the real line. Its main proponent was
Weierstrass
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (german: link=no, Weierstraß ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematics ...
, who argued the geometric foundations of
calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizati ...
were not solid enough for rigorous work.
Research program
The highlights of this research program are:
* the various (but equivalent)
constructions of the
real number
In mathematics, a real number is a number that can be used to measure a ''continuous'' one-dimensional quantity such as a distance, duration or temperature. Here, ''continuous'' means that values can have arbitrarily small variations. Every ...
s by
Dedekind and
Cantor
A cantor or chanter is a person who leads people in singing or sometimes in prayer. In formal Jewish worship, a cantor is a person who sings solo verses or passages to which the choir or congregation responds.
In Judaism, a cantor sings and lead ...
resulting in the modern axiomatic definition of the real number field;
* the epsilon-delta definition of
limit
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* ''Limit'' (film), a South Korean film
* Limit (music), a way to characterize harmony
* "Limit" (song), a 2016 single by Luna Sea
* "Limits", a 2019 ...
; and
* the
naïve set-theoretic definition of
function.
Legacy
An important spinoff of the arithmetization of analysis is
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 concern ...
. Naive set theory was created by
Cantor
A cantor or chanter is a person who leads people in singing or sometimes in prayer. In formal Jewish worship, a cantor is a person who sings solo verses or passages to which the choir or congregation responds.
In Judaism, a cantor sings and lead ...
and others after arithmetization was completed as a way to study the singularities of functions appearing in calculus.
The arithmetization of analysis had several important consequences:
* the widely held belief in the banishment of
infinitesimal
In mathematics, an infinitesimal number is a quantity that is closer to zero than any standard real number, but that is not zero. The word ''infinitesimal'' comes from a 17th-century Modern Latin coinage ''infinitesimus'', which originally re ...
s from mathematics until the creation of
non-standard analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta ...
by
Abraham Robinson
Abraham Robinson (born Robinsohn; October 6, 1918 – April 11, 1974) was a mathematician who is most widely known for development of nonstandard analysis, a mathematically rigorous system whereby infinitesimal and infinite numbers were reincorp ...
in the 1960s, whereas in reality the work on non-Archimedean systems continued unabated, as documented by P. Ehrlich;
* the shift of the emphasis from
geometric
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...
to
algebra
Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics.
Elementary ...
ic reasoning: this has had important consequences in the way mathematics is taught today;
* it made possible the development of modern
measure theory
In mathematics, the concept of a measure is a generalization and formalization of geometrical measures (length, area, volume) and other common notions, such as mass and probability of events. These seemingly distinct concepts have many simila ...
by
Lebesgue and the rudiments of
functional analysis
Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defi ...
by
Hilbert
David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many ...
;
* it motivated the currently prevalent philosophical position that all of mathematics should be derivable from logic and set theory, ultimately leading to
Hilbert's program,
Gödel's theorems and
non-standard analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta ...
.
Quotations
* "God created the natural numbers, all else is the work of man." —
Kronecker
References
* Torina Dechaune Lewis (2006) ''The Arithmetization of Analysis: From Eudoxus to Dedekind'', Southern University.
* Carl B. Boyer,
Uta C. Merzbach (2011) ''A History of Mathematics'' John Wiley & Sons.
''Arithmetization of analysis''at
Encyclopedia of Mathematics
The ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics'' (also ''EOM'' and formerly ''Encyclopaedia of Mathematics'') is a large reference work in mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structu ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arithmetization Of Analysis
History of mathematics
Philosophy of mathematics
Mathematical analysis