Foundations for analysis and proof theory (Q798634): Difference between revisions

After some rather forced assertions of the primacy of arithmeticising tendencies in late 18th and early 19th-century analysis, the author recalls Dedekind's definition of an irrational number in terms of a cut, Hilbert's interest in the consistency of arithmetic, and Russell's and Whitehead's motivations in Principia mathematica. He then turns to aspects of Hilbert's metamathematics, especially as related to analysis, and moves on to recent studies in, and of, these areas. In his concluding section he appraises the interpretation of analysis as a conservative extension of arithmetic.