Historical and philosophical notices on the continuum (Q2408961): Difference between revisions

This is a historical survey of the philosophical and mathematical problem of the continuum. It starts with the Greeks (the pre-Socratic philosophers, with particular emphasis on the Pythagoreans, Democritus, Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid), stops at Leibniz, and then moves on to the arithmetization of the continuum in the 19th century, and to non-standard analysis (in both Abraham Robinson's form and that of Curt Schmieden und Detlef Laugwitz). Altogether an enjoyable and informative article.