General theory of infinitesimals (Q2639852)

The author describes a theory extending Nelson's internal set theory by the possibility of the usage of infinitely small quantities of higher orders. From the point of view of the enlargement technique, the described situation corresponds (roughly speaking) to the countably many iterated enlargement process (in the second iteration the second order infinitesimals are obtained). Then he gives some general theorems concerning the ``leveled'' notions (e.g., to be standard in level p) and uses them for nonstandard proofs of some standard theorems. In comparison with common nonstandard proofs the given proofs are more direct and ``more nonstandard''. More detailed attention is devoted to almost periodic functions in the framework of differential equations. At the end of the paper the author proves the consistency of his theory relative to ZFC. In my opinion the author's procedures (using infinitely small quantities of higher orders) can also be used in the theory described in a paper of \textit{D. Ballard} and \textit{K. Hrbacek} [``Standard foundations for nonstandard analysis'', City College of New York, NY 10031 (May 1990)] (if the existence of an isomorphism of the standard and the external universe is supposed) which is more general and in my opinion more elegant.