Defining sets as sets of points of spaces

DOI10.1007/BF00249676MaRDI QIDQ1106844zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Colin McLarty

Publication date 1988

Published in Journal of Philosophical Logic (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00249676

zbMATH Keywords

category of spacesdiscrete setsexcluded middleSynthetic Differential Geometrytopos

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Set theory (03E99) Categories in geometry and topology (18F99)

Review text

The work of Dedekind and Cantor succeeded in reducing the continuum (the geometric line) to the theory of (discrete) sets. The author explains how, in an opposite direction, the discrete should be derived out of the continuous, conceived in Lawvere's spirit as some category (topos) of `spaces', for which the law of excluded middle does not hold. The spaces for which excluded middle does hold are, according to the present article, precisely the discrete sets; some axioms are presented, extending those of Synthetic Differential Geometry (in the sense of the reviewer's book of this title (1981; Zbl 0466.51008), say), which give discrete sets a status within the category of spaces. There are no proofs, but some acute historical remarks.

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Cited in

(4)

• The three arrows of Zeno. Cantorian and non-Cantorian concepts of the continuum and of motion
• The unity and identity of decidable objects and double-negation sheaves
• Po-groups and hypergroups in a topos
• Tininess and right adjoints to exponentials

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