In the footsteps of Julius König's paradox (Q5962966)
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scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6545691
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English | In the footsteps of Julius König's paradox |
scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6545691 |
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In the footsteps of Julius König's paradox (English)
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25 February 2016
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The paper is devoted to the history of König's paradox. It was first mentioned in his paper from 1905 and states that there is a number that at the same time is and is not finitely definable. This paradox was used by König for (trying to) prove that the continuum was not well-ordered, and only later he shifted the focus to the contradiction itself and tried to find solutions. After giving some biographical information, \textit{J. König}'s 1904 talk at the Third International Mathematical Congress in Heidelberg [Verh. d. 3. intern. Math. Kongr. Heidelb., 144--147 (1905; JFM 36.0096.01)] is presented. Next, his 1905 paper [Math. Ann. 61, 156--160 (1905; JFM 36.0097.02)] and reactions to it are described. Furthermore, his 1906 paper [Math. Ann. 63, 217--221 (1906; JFM 37.0072.05)] is discussed. It was criticized by some authors (in particular criticism of Vivanti, Hessenberg, Schoenflies, Poincaré, Peano and Zermelo). Finally, \textit{J. König}'s paradox in his book [Neue Grundlagen der Logik, Arithmetik und Mengenlehre. Leipzig: Veit \& Comp (1914; JFM 45.0124.01)] is discussed -- in this book, he tried to develop Poincaré's idea of founding mathematics on intuition. It should be added that the paper under review contains an extensive bibliography.
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20th century logic
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paradoxes
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set theory
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infinite
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