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Constructivism (mathematics)
In the philosophy of mathematics, constructivism asserts that it is necessary to find (or "construct") a specific example of a mathematical object in order to prove that an example exists. Contrastingly, in classical mathematics, one can prove the existence of a mathematical object without "finding" that object explicitly, by assuming its non-existence and then deriving a contradiction from that assumption. Such a proof by contradiction might be called non-constructive, and a constructivist might reject it. The constructive viewpoint involves a verificational interpretation of the existential quantifier, which is at odds with its classical interpretation. There are many forms of constructivism. These include the program of intuitionism founded by Brouwer, the finitism of Hilbert and Bernays, the constructive recursive mathematics of Shanin and Markov, and Bishop's program of constructive analysis. Constructivism also includes the study of constructive set theories such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's lives. The logical and structural nature of mathematics itself makes this study both broad and unique among its philosophical counterparts. The philosophy of mathematics has two major themes: mathematical realism and mathematical anti-realism. History The origin of mathematics is subject to arguments and disagreements. Whether the birth of mathematics was a random happening or induced by necessity during the development of other subjects, like physics, is still a matter of prolific debates. Many thinkers have contributed their ideas concerning the nature of mathematics. Today, some philosophers of mathematics aim to give accounts of this form of inquiry and its products as they stand, while others emphasize a role for themselves that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topos Theory
In mathematics, a topos (, ; plural topoi or , or toposes) is a category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topological space (or more generally: on a site). Topoi behave much like the category of sets and possess a notion of localization; they are a direct generalization of point-set topology. The Grothendieck topoi find applications in algebraic geometry; the more general elementary topoi are used in logic. The mathematical field that studies topoi is called topos theory. Grothendieck topos (topos in geometry) Since the introduction of sheaves into mathematics in the 1940s, a major theme has been to study a space by studying sheaves on a space. This idea was expounded by Alexander Grothendieck by introducing the notion of a "topos". The main utility of this notion is in the abundance of situations in mathematics where topological heuristics are very effective, but an honest topological space is lacking; it is sometimes possible to find a topos formal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goldbach's Conjecture
Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory and all of mathematics. It states that every even natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. The conjecture has been shown to hold for all integers less than 4 × 1018, but remains unproven despite considerable effort. History On 7 June 1742, the German mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to Leonhard Euler (letter XLIII), in which he proposed the following conjecture: Goldbach was following the now-abandoned convention of considering 1 to be a prime number, so that a sum of units would indeed be a sum of primes. He then proposed a second conjecture in the margin of his letter, which implies the first: Euler replied in a letter dated 30 June 1742 and reminded Goldbach of an earlier conversation they had had (), in which Goldbach had remarked that the first of those two conjectures would follow from the statement This is in fact equivalent to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theory Of Justification
Justification (also called epistemic justification) is the property of belief that qualifies it as knowledge rather than mere opinion. Epistemology is the study of reasons that someone holds a rationally admissible belief (although the term is also sometimes applied to other propositional attitudes such as doubt). Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of warrant (a proper justification for holding a belief), knowledge, rationality, and probability, among others. Debates surrounding epistemic justification often involve the ''structure'' of justification, including whether there are foundational justified beliefs or whether mere coherence is sufficient for a system of beliefs to qualify as justified. Another major subject of debate is the sources of justification, which might include perceptual experience (the evidence of the senses), reason, and authoritative testimony, among others. Justification and knowledge "Justi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinity
Infinity is that which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol . Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions among philosophers. In the 17th century, with the introduction of the infinity symbol and the infinitesimal calculus, mathematicians began to work with infinite series and what some mathematicians (including l'Hôpital and Bernoulli) regarded as infinitely small quantities, but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes. As mathematicians struggled with the foundation of calculus, it remained unclear whether infinity could be considered as a number or magnitude and, if so, how this could be done. At the end of the 19th century, Georg Cantor enlarged the mathematical study of infinity by studying infinite sets and infinite numbers, showing that they can be of various sizes. For example, if a line is viewed as the set of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Law Of Bivalence
In logic, the semantic principle (or law) of bivalence states that every declarative sentence expressing a proposition (of a theory under inspection) has exactly one truth value, either true or false. A logic satisfying this principle is called a two-valued logic or bivalent logic. In formal logic, the principle of bivalence becomes a property that a semantics may or may not possess. It is not the same as the law of excluded middle, however, and a semantics may satisfy that law without being bivalent. The principle of bivalence is studied in philosophical logic to address the question of which natural-language statements have a well-defined truth value. Sentences that predict events in the future, and sentences that seem open to interpretation, are particularly difficult for philosophers who hold that the principle of bivalence applies to all declarative natural-language statements. Many-valued logics formalize ideas that a realistic characterization of the notion of conseque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finite Set
In mathematics, particularly set theory, a finite set is a set that has a finite number of elements. Informally, a finite set is a set which one could in principle count and finish counting. For example, :\ is a finite set with five elements. The number of elements of a finite set is a natural number (possibly zero) and is called the ''cardinality (or the cardinal number)'' of the set. A set that is not a finite set is called an '' infinite set''. For example, the set of all positive integers is infinite: :\. Finite sets are particularly important in combinatorics, the mathematical study of counting. Many arguments involving finite sets rely on the pigeonhole principle, which states that there cannot exist an injective function from a larger finite set to a smaller finite set. Definition and terminology Formally, a set is called finite if there exists a bijection :f\colon S\to\ for some natural number . The number is the set's cardinality, denoted as . The empty set o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Variables
In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a free variable is a notation (symbol) that specifies places in an expression where substitution may take place and is not a parameter of this or any container expression. Some older books use the terms real variable and apparent variable for free variable and bound variable, respectively. The idea is related to a placeholder (a symbol that will later be replaced by some value), or a wildcard character that stands for an unspecified symbol. In computer programming, the term free variable refers to variables used in a function that are neither local variables nor parameters of that function. The term non-local variable is often a synonym in this context. A bound variable, in contrast, is a variable that has been ''bound'' to a specific value or range of values in the domain of discourse or universe. This may be achieved through the use of logical quantif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantifiers (logic)
In logic, a quantifier is an operator that specifies how many individuals in the domain of discourse satisfy an open formula. For instance, the universal quantifier \forall in the first order formula \forall x P(x) expresses that everything in the domain satisfies the property denoted by P. On the other hand, the existential quantifier \exists in the formula \exists x P(x) expresses that there exists something in the domain which satisfies that property. A formula where a quantifier takes widest scope is called a quantified formula. A quantified formula must contain a bound variable and a subformula specifying a property of the referent of that variable. The mostly commonly used quantifiers are \forall and \exists. These quantifiers are standardly defined as duals; in classical logic, they are interdefinable using negation. They can also be used to define more complex quantifiers, as in the formula \neg \exists x P(x) which expresses that nothing has the property P. Othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heyting Arithmetic
In mathematical logic, Heyting arithmetic is an axiomatization of arithmetic in accordance with the philosophy of intuitionism.Troelstra 1973:18 It is named after Arend Heyting, who first proposed it. Axiomatization As with first-order Peano arithmetic , the intended model of this theory are the natural numbers and the theories characterize addition and multiplication. Heyting arithmetic adopts the axioms of Peano arithmetic, including the signature with zero "0" and the successor "S", but uses intuitionistic logic for inference. In particular, the principle of the excluded middle does not hold in general. Metalogic and theorems As with other theories over intuitionistic logic, various instances of can be proven. For instance, proves equality "=" is decidable for all numbers, :\vdash \forall n. \forall m. \big((n = m)\lor\neg(n = m)\big) In fact, since equality is the only predicate symbol in Heyting arithmetic, it then follows that, for any quantifier-free formula \phi, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Law Of Non-contradiction
In logic, the law of non-contradiction (LNC) (also known as the law of contradiction, principle of non-contradiction (PNC), or the principle of contradiction) states that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time, e. g. the two propositions "''p is the case''" and "''p is not the case''" are mutually exclusive. Formally this is expressed as the tautology ¬(p ∧ ¬p). The law is not to be confused with the law of excluded middle which states that at least one, "p is the case" or "p is not the case" holds. One reason to have this law is the principle of explosion, which states that anything follows from a contradiction. The law is employed in a ''reductio ad absurdum'' proof. To express the fact that the law is tenseless and to avoid equivocation, sometimes the law is amended to say "contradictory propositions cannot both be true 'at the same time and in the same sense'". It is one of the so called three laws of thought, along with i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axiom
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident'. The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question. As used in modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning. As used in mathematics, the term ''axiom'' is used in two related but distinguishable senses: "logical axioms" and "non-logical axioms". Logical axioms are usually statements that are taken to be true within the system of logic they define and are often shown in symbolic form (e.g., (''A'' and ''B'') implies ''A''), while non-logical axioms (e.g., ) are actua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
