On a finitary version of mathematical analysis (Q5957917)

This paper is an extended exposition of the talk ``A finitary version of mathematical analysis as a result of the development of theory of functional spaces in classical mathematics'' presented by the author at the conference ``First St. Petersburg Days of Logic and Computability'' in 1999. An approach of constructing a finitary version of some fields of mathematical analysis is sketched in this paper. The choice of basic concepts for building the finitary version of analysis is motivated primarily by specific theorems in analysis that have the form: the metric space \((M, \rho)\) under consideration has a countable dense set \(D\) such that (1) elements in \(D\) have individual representations as constructively defined objects of a certain specific type, called objects of type \(\tau\); (2) objects of type \(\tau\) (= elements of \(D\)) form a decidable set; (3) the metric function \(\rho \) on \(D\) viewed as the set of objects of type \(\tau\) is given as a certain algorithm; and (4) if \(x\) and \(y\) are objects of type \(\tau\) then \(\rho (x, y)\) is a rational number or, in the alternatice version, an algebraic number. Thus every element in such metric space can be approximated by constructively defined objects in \(D\). In other words, elements in \((M, \rho)\) are ``almost constructively defined objects of type \(\tau\)''. Consequently, many operators in analysis are approximable in a ``sufficiently interesting'' sense by ``finitarily describable'' operators of the same type. Thus one obtains a finitary version of such operators and theorems.