In the footsteps of Julius König's paradox

DOI10.1016/J.HM.2015.07.003MaRDI QIDQ5962966zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Miriam Franchella

Publication date 25 February 2016

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL http://hdl.handle.net/2434/468932

zbMATH Keywords

20th century logic infinite paradoxes set theory

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05)

Review text

The paper is devoted to the history of König's paradox. It was first mentioned in his paper from 1905 and states that there is a number that at the same time is and is not finitely definable. This paradox was used by König for (trying to) prove that the continuum was not well-ordered, and only later he shifted the focus to the contradiction itself and tried to find solutions. After giving some biographical information, \textit{J. König}'s 1904 talk at the Third International Mathematical Congress in Heidelberg [Verh. d. 3. intern. Math. Kongr. Heidelb., 144--147 (1905; JFM 36.0096.01)] is presented. Next, his 1905 paper [Math. Ann. 61, 156--160 (1905; JFM 36.0097.02)] and reactions to it are described. Furthermore, his 1906 paper [Math. Ann. 63, 217--221 (1906; JFM 37.0072.05)] is discussed. It was criticized by some authors (in particular criticism of Vivanti, Hessenberg, Schoenflies, Poincaré, Peano and Zermelo). Finally, \textit{J. König}'s paradox in his book [Neue Grundlagen der Logik, Arithmetik und Mengenlehre. Leipzig: Veit \& Comp (1914; JFM 45.0124.01)] is discussed -- in this book, he tried to develop Poincaré's idea of founding mathematics on intuition. It should be added that the paper under review contains an extensive bibliography.

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