Comment on In this essay...
Taldan@lemmy.world 6 months agoPresumably you were starting with a fundamental axiom such as 1 + 1 = 2, which is the difficult one to prove because it’s so fundamental
I find this axiomatization of the naturals quite neat:
Now the neat part: If 0 is a constant, then s(0) is also a constant. So we can invent a name for that constant and call it “1.” Now s(s(0)) is a constant, too. Call it “2” and proceed to invent the natural numbers.
What’s missing here os the definition that we’re working in base 10. While it won’t be a proof, Fibbonaci has his nice little Liber Abbaci where he explains arabic numerals. A system of axioms for base 10, a definition of addition and your succession function would suffice. Probably what the originals were going for, but I can’t imagine how that would take 86 pages. Reading it’s been on my todo list, but I doubt I’ll manage 86 pages of modern math designed to be harder to read than egyptian hieroglyphs.
That ‘86 pages’ factoid is misleading. They weren’t trying to prove that 1+1=2. They were trying to build a foundation for mathematics, and at some point along the way that prove fell out of the equations.
Yeah, I assumed. No way 86 pages are needed for a proof of ‘1+1=2’.
That being said, it’d be nice for there to actually be a “proof” of 1+1=2, made as concise and simple as possible, while retaining all the precision required of such proof, including a complete set of axioms.
This, obviously isn’t is, nor does it try to. It’s not the “1+1=2” book, ot’s the theoretical fpindations of matheđatics book. Nothing wrong with that.
That axiomisation is incomplete as it doesn’t preclude stuff like loops, a predecessor to zero or a second number line.
I think you are missing some properties of successors (uniqueness and s(n) different than any m<= n)
That would avoid “branching” of two different successors to n and loops in which a successor is a smaller number than n
There are non-standard models of arithmetic. They follow the original first-order Peano axioms and any theorem about the naturals is true for them, but they have some wacky extra stuff in them like you mention.
Not sure what you mean by ‘loops’ - except perhaps modular arithmetic, but there are no natural numbers that are negative - you may be thinking of integers, which is constructed from the natural numbers. Similarly, rational numbers, real numbers, and complex numbers are also constructed from the naturals. Complex numbers are often expressed as though they’re two dimensional, since the imaginary part cannot be properly reduced, e.g. 3+2i.
I recommend this playlist by mathematician another roof: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsdeQ7TnWVm_EQG1rm…
They build the whole modern number system ‘from scratch’
I know how how natural numbers work, but the axioms in the comment i replied to are not enough to define them.
Not sure what you mean by ‘loops’
There could be a number n such that m=s(n) and n=s(m).
This would be precluded by taking the axiom of induction or the trichotomy axiom.
If we only take the latter we can still make a second number line, that runs “parallel” to the “propper number line” like:
n,s(n),s(s(n)),s(s(s(n))),... 0,s(0),s(s(0)),s(s(s(0))),...
there are no natural numbers that are negative
I know, but the given axioms don’t preclude it. Under the peano axioms it’s explicitly spelled out:
0 is not the successor of any natural number
Yeah, that’s what meant with “2 is just the shortened representation of 1+1”.
Same with 1+1+1=3, really. We need to decide the value of 1,2,3,4… Before we can do anything. In hindsight if you think about it, for someone that doesn’t know the value of the symbols we use to represent numbers, any combination that mixes numbers requires the axiom of 1+1+1+1+… = X
I’d be surprised if someone proved that something equals 5 without any kind of axiom that already makes 5 equal to another thing.
Matriks404@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s only difficult to prove if you somehow aren’t able to observe objects in real world.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s just empirical data, not a mathematical axiom. I know it’s true, you know it’s true but this is math as philosophy not math as a tool