The destiny of the Cantor- Dedekind model

MaRDI QIDQ4037518zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Jean-Michel Salanskis

Publication date 18 May 1993

zbMATH Keywords

classical conceptions of the continuummodern conceptions of the continuum

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematical logic and foundations (03-03) Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05) Other classical set theory (including functions, relations, and set algebra) (03E20)

Review text

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0758.00020.] This paper is about the recent moves in the mathematical conception of the continuum. It starts with a description of the classical model, which was defined on four stages: Dedekind or the arithmetisation of the continuum, Cantor or the decision for the frame of sets, Zermelo-Fraenkel or the arithmetisation of set-theory, Bourbaki or the systematic rewriting of analysis in the set-theoretical framework. Insistance is put on the three main aspects of the classical conceptualisation: 1) connectivity of the continuum, 2) over-enumerability of the continuum, 3) the fact that functions on the continuum are likely to be discontinuous. Then the two ways mathematicians are actually trying to deconstruct this classical image come to be examined: 1) by rejecting the equalization of the continuum with any particular structured set, by refusing any reduction of the continuum to the discrete through the very concept of set; 2) or by giving priority, in the consideration of the continuum, to the fact that it includes constructive entities, which build so to say its skeleton. Many more or less modern approaches are taken into account in that perspective: the Conway construction of the big ``field \textit{No}, different and successive formulations of non-standard analysis, the Brouwerian continuum, or the categorical insights brought by the theory of topoi. The conclusion of the paper is that the continuum tends to be related with excess over the finite on the one hand, with incommensurability between scales on the other hand, these two factors being likely to be conjugated in various ways of various frameworks.

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(16)

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