A Cantorian argument against infinitesimals (Q1868170)
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English | A Cantorian argument against infinitesimals |
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A Cantorian argument against infinitesimals (English)
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27 April 2003
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In this interesting and eminently readable paper, the author proposes -- by providing a meaningful definition for the product of a magnitude (the length of a geometric segment) with an arbitrary ordinal number -- a modern reading (most likely the only reasonable one) of Cantor's 1887 ``proof'' of the impossibility of infinitesimals, and shows that the results Cantor considers contradictory, which are carefully isolated and stated as axioms in this paper, are in fact equivalent to the Archimedean axiom in the presence of the axioms for Euclidean geometry from Hilbert's groups I--IV.
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infinitesimals
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Cantor
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