A non-standard analysis of a cultural icon: the case of Paul Halmos

DOI10.1007/S11787-016-0153-0zbMATH Open1365.01032arXiv1607.00149OpenAlexW2466133312MaRDI QIDQ528518FDOQ528518

Authors: Piotr Błaszczyk, Mikhail G. Katz, David Sherry, Alexandre V. Borovik, Vladimir Kanovei, Taras S. Kudryk, S. S. Kutateladze 

Publication date: 12 May 2017

Published in: Logica Universalis (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We examine Paul Halmos' comments on category theory, Dedekind cuts, devil worship, logic, and Robinson's infinitesimals. Halmos' scepticism about category theory derives from his philosophical position of naive set-theoretic realism. In the words of an MAA biography, Halmos thought that mathematics is "certainty" and "architecture" yet 20th century logic teaches us is that mathematics is full of uncertainty or more precisely incompleteness. If the term architecture meant to imply that mathematics is one great solid castle, then modern logic tends to teach us the opposite lession, namely that the castle is floating in midair. Halmos' realism tends to color his judgment of purely scientific aspects of logic and the way it is practiced and applied. He often expressed distaste for nonstandard models, and made a sustained effort to eliminate first-order logic, the logicians' concept of interpretation, and the syntactic vs semantic distinction. He felt that these were vague, and sought to replace them all by his polyadic algebra. Halmos claimed that Robinson's framework is "unnecessary" but Henson and Keisler argue that Robinson's framework allows one to dig deeper into set-theoretic resources than is common in Archimedean mathematics. This can potentially prove theorems not accessible by standard methods, undermining Halmos' criticisms. Keywords: Archimedean axiom; bridge between discrete and continuous mathematics; hyperreals; incomparable quantities; indispensability; infinity; mathematical realism; Robinson.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00149

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zbMATH Keywords

nonstandard analysisphilosophy of maths

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) Invariant subspaces of linear operators (47A15) Nonstandard analysis (26E35)

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Cited In (5)

• On mathematical realism and applicability of hyperreals
• Cauchy's infinitesimals, his sum theorem, and foundational paradigms
• Gregory's sixth operation
• Toward a history of mathematics focused on procedures
• A footnote to ``The crisis in contemporary mathematics

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