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Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics
edited by
Penelope Rush
University of Tasmania
Stewart Shapiro
The Ohio State University

A CONCISE HISTORY OF
MATHEMATICS FOR
PHILOSOPHERS

John Stillwell
University of San Francisco

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108456234
DOI: 10.1017/9781108610124
© John Stillwell 2019
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2019
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-45623-4 Paperback
ISSN 2399-2883 (online)
ISSN 2514-3808 (print)
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics

DOI: 10.1017/9781108610124
First published online: June 2019

John Stillwell
University of San Francisco
Author for correspondence: John Stillwell, [email protected]

Abstract: This Element aims to present an outline of mathematics and its

history, with particular emphasis on events that shook up its
philosophy. It ranges from the discovery of irrational numbers in
ancient Greece to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century discoveries
on the nature of inﬁnity and proof. Recurring themes are intuition and
logic, meaning and existence, and the discrete and the continuous.
These themes have evolved under the inﬂuence of new mathematical
discoveries, and the story of their evolution is, to a large extent, the
story of philosophy of mathematics.

Keywords: mathematics, philosophy

© John Stillwell 2019

ISBNs: 9781108456234 (PB), 9781108610124 (OC)
ISSNs: 2399-2883 (online), 2514-3808 (print)

Preface 1

1 Irrational Numbers and Geometry 2

2 Inﬁnity in Greek Mathematics 8

3 Imaginary Numbers 15

4 Calculus and Inﬁnitesimals 21

5 Continuous Functions and Real Numbers 30

6 From Non-Euclidean Geometry to Arithmetic 35

7 Set Theory and Its Paradoxes 44

8 Formal Systems 51

9 Unsolvability and Incompleteness 57

Bibliography 66

Preface
Since ancient times, there has been a struggle between mathematics and its
philosophy. As soon as there seems to be a settled view of the nature of mathe-
matics, some new mathematical discovery comes along to disrupt it. Thus, the
Pythagorean view that ‘all is number’ was disrupted by the discovery of irrational
lengths, and the philosophy of mathematics had to expand to include a separate
field of geometry. But this raised the question, Can the geometric view be
reconciled with the numerical view? If so, how? And so it went, for millennia.
In many cases, advances in mathematics changed ideas about mathematics,
by forcing the acceptance of concepts previously thought impossible or para-
doxical. Thus mathematics disrupted philosophy. In the opposite direction,
philosophy kept mathematics honest by pointing out contradictions and sug-
gesting how concepts might be clarified in order to resolve them. Sometimes the
philosopher and the mathematician were one and the same person – such as
Descartes, Leibniz, or Bolzano – so one might almost say that mathematics is an
especially rich and stable branch of philosophy. At any rate, if one is to under-
stand the past and present state of the philosophy of mathematics, one must first
understand mathematics, and its history.
The aim of the present Element is to give a brief introduction to mathematics
and its history, with particular emphasis on events that shook up its philosophy.
If you like, it is a book on ‘mathematics for philosophers’. I try not to take
a particular philosophical position, except to say that I believe that mathematics
guides philosophy, more so than the other way round. As a corollary, I believe
that mathematicians have made important contributions to philosophy, even
when it was not their intention.
Each section begins with a preview of topics to be discussed and ends with
a section highlighting the philosophical questions raised by the mathematics.
The same themes recur from section to section – intuition and logic, meaning
and existence, and the discrete and the continuous – but they evolve under the
influence of new mathematical discoveries.
Experts may be surprised that there is little or no mention of philosophies of
mathematics that were prominent in the twentieth century – platonism, logi-
cism, formalism, nominalism, and intuitionism, for example. This is partly
because I find none of them adequate, but mainly because I hope to look at
the philosophy of mathematics without being influenced by labels. I want to
present as much philosophically instructive mathematics as possible and leave
readers to decide how it should be sorted and labelled in philosophical terms.
My hope is that this Element will equip readers with a ‘mathematical lens’ with
which to view many philosophical issues.

I thank Jeremy Avigad, Rossella Lupacchini, Wilfried Sieg, and an anon-

ymous referee for their helpful comments, which have resulted in many
improvements.

1 Irrational Numbers and Geometry

PREVIEW
The source of many issues in the philosophy of mathematics – the nature of
proof and truth; the meaning and existence of numbers; the role of infinity;
and the relation between geometry, algebra, and arithmetic – is Euclid’s
Elements from around 300 BCE. The Elements is best known for its axio-
matic geometry – Euclidean geometry – which includes proofs of signature
results such as the Pythagorean theorem and the existence of exactly five
regular polyhedra. However, the Elements also includes fundamental ideas
of number theory, such as the existence of infinitely many prime numbers,
the Euclidean algorithm for greatest common divisor, and (an equivalent of)
unique prime factorization.
In Euclid‘s time, as now, there was a conceptual gulf between geometry and
number theory – between measuring and counting, or between the continuous
and the discrete. The major reason for this gulf was the existence of irrationals,
discovered before Euclid’s time by the Pythagoreans and, by the time of the
Elements, the subject of a sophisticated ‘theory of proportions’. This theory, in
Book Vof the Elements, made a tenuous bridge between the continuous and the
discrete. The bridge was gradually strengthened over the centuries by the work
of later mathematicians, but not without philosophical conflicts and mathema-
tical surprises.
These issues are the subject of this section and the next.

1.1 The Pythagorean Theorem

The Pythagorean theorem was discovered independently several times in
human history, and in several different cultures. So if any theorem typiﬁes
mathematics – and its universality – this is it. Figure 1 illustrates the theorem:
the (grey) square on the hypotenuse of the (white) right-angled triangle is equal
to sum of the (black) squares on the other two sides.
Figure 2 shows a plausible ‘proof by picture’ of the theorem: the grey square
equals the big square minus four copies of the triangle, which in turn equals the
sum of the two black squares.
Most of the independent discoveries of the theorem were probably like this,
and indeed the human visual system has many mathematical discoveries to its
credit. Nevertheless, it was the radically different axiomatic path to theorems,
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 3

Figure 1 The Pythagorean theorem.

Figure 2 Seeing the Pythagorean theorem.

discussed in Section 1.4, that set the direction of mathematics for the next 2000
years.
But before the axiomatic path was established, the Pythagorean theo-
rem provoked another important conceptual development: a distinction
between length and number. Legend has it that the philosophy of the
Pythagoreans was ‘all is number’, prompted by the discovery that whole
number ratios govern musical harmony. This philosophy was overturned
when irrational ratios were found in geometry – because of the
Pythagorean theorem.

1.2 Irrationality
The Pythagorean theorem talks about sums of squares – an operation we will
say more about below – but indirectly, it also tells us something about lengths.
In particular, it says that if a triangle has perpendicular sides of length 1, then its
hypotenuse has the length l whose square is 2. Using the modern notation l2 to
denote the square of side l, we have l2 ¼ 12 þ 12 ¼ 2.
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4 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

Now (again using modern notation), suppose that l is rational, in which case
we can suppose that l ¼ m=n, where m and n are whole numbers. We can also
suppose that m and n have no common divisor except 1, since any other
common divisor could be divided out of m and n in advance, without changing
l. Under these conditions we can derive a contradiction by the following series
of implications (these probably go back to the Pythagoreans, but the ﬁrst known
hint of such a proof is in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 1.23):

l ¼ m=n ) 2 ¼ m2 =n2 (squaring both sides)

) 2n ¼ m
2 2
(multiplying both sides by n2)
) 2
m is even
) m is even; say; ¼ 2p (since the square of an odd number is odd)
) 2n2 ¼ ð2pÞ2 ¼ 4p2 (substituting m = 2p in 2n2 = m2)
) n2 ¼ 2p2
) n2 is even
) n is even
) 2 divides both m and n;
contrary to the assumption of no common divisor:

Since it is contradictory to assume that l is a ratio of whole numbers, l is an

irrational length. The Greeks often expressed this by saying that the side and
hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle with equal sides are incommensurable –
not whole number multiples of any common unit of measure.
In the view of the Pythagoreans, the lack of a common unit of length meant
that lengths are not numbers, because ‘numbers’ to them were whole numbers
and their ratios. In particular, sums and products of lengths are not necessarily
like sums and products of numbers, so the concept of ‘sum of squares’ needs
clariﬁcation. In the next section we will see how Euclid handled sums and
products of lengths.

1.3 Operations on Lengths and Numbers

By denying that irrational lengths could be numbers, yet allowing that they
could be squared and added, the Greek mathematicians after Pythagoras had to
deﬁne sum and product in purely geometric terms.
The sum of two lengths is deﬁned in the obvious way suggested by Figure 3.
The lengths are represented by two line segments a and b, and a þ b is obtained
by joining these segments end to end.
It follows easily that a þ b ¼ b þ a and a þ ðb þ cÞ ¼ ða þ bÞ þ c (commu-
tative and associative laws). It is also clear, since the sum of lengths is a length,
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 5

Figure 3 The sum of two lengths.

Figure 4 The product of three lengths.

that any number of lengths can be added. Thus lengths behave exactly like
numbers as far as addition is concerned.
The behaviour of products is not so simple. The product of lengths a and b is
not a length but the rectangle with perpendicular sides a and b. And the product
of lengths a, b, and c is the rectangular box with perpendicular sides a, b, and c
(Figure 4).
It is clear from these definitions that ab ¼ ba and aðbcÞ ¼ ðabÞc, and it can
also be seen that aðb þ cÞ ¼ ab þ ac (the latter is actually a special case of
Euclid’s Proposition 1 of Book II of the Elements). Thus, to the extent that sum
and product are defined, lengths satisfy the same laws as positive numbers. The
trouble is that they are defined only to a limited extent, so the algebra of lengths
is crippled. Products of more than three lengths are not admitted, because they
have no geometric counterpart. Likewise, products can be added only when
each is of the same ‘dimension’, that is, a product of the same number of
lengths.
Finally, there is a complicated, though geometrically natural, notion of
equality. It says, for example, that two rectangles R and S are equal if R can
be cut into a finite number of triangles which reassemble to form S. We say more
about Euclid’s theory of equality for rectangles, and other polygons, in the next
section. Remarkably, this theory is perfectly adequate for polygons, because any
two polygons of equal area (in the modern sense) are actually equal in Euclid’s
sense. However, the theory is not adequate for polyhedra, as was shown by
Dehn (1900). Dehn showed that a cube and regular tetrahedron of equal volume
are not equal in Euclid’s sense.

1.4 Axiomatics
The power of the axiomatic method is charmingly described by John Aubrey in
his Brief Lives, speaking of Thomas Hobbes:
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6 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

Figure 5 Non-parallel lines.

He was 40 yeares old before he looked on geometry; which happened

accidently. Being in a gentleman’s library … Euclid’s Elements lay open,
and ’twas the 47 Elements, Book I. He read the proposition. ‘By G–’, sayd he,
‘this is impossible!’ So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him
back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back
to another, which he also read … that at last he was demonstratively con-
vinced of that trueth. This made him in love with geometry.

Proposition 47 of Book I, incidentally, is the Pythagorean theorem. The

Elements is the ﬁrst systematic account of theorems and proofs that has come
down to us, and it became the standard way of presenting mathematics in the
Western world (and later the Islamic world) for the next 2000 years.
Euclid begins with a small number of basic assumptions (axioms) and
deduces all theorems from them by logic. His axioms include simple state-
ments about points, lines, length, and angle. There are also statements about
equality, addition, and subtraction, such as ‘things which are equal to the
same thing are equal to each other’ and ‘if equals be added to equals then the
wholes are equal’. The principles of logic are not explicitly stated. The most
important axiom, needed for the Pythagorean theorem and many others, is
the parallel axiom. Euclid states it as follows, in the translation by Heath
(1956):

That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the
same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indeﬁ-
nitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than two right angles.

This rather long-winded statement is illustrated in Figure 5. The line n falls on

the lines l and m, making angles α and β on the right with α þ β < π. The
conclusion is that l and m then meet somewhere on the right. Thus the parallel
axiom actually gives a condition for lines not to be parallel.
It follows (not quite obviously) that there is exactly one parallel to a given
line l through a given point P outside l, namely the line m for which α þ β ¼ π.
The complicated character of the parallel axiom provoked many attempts to
eliminate it by showing that it follows from Euclid’s other axioms. But all such
attempts failed. This led, in the nineteenth century, to a thorough examination of the

axiomatic method and to subsequent analysis of its scope and limits. We pick up
this story later.

1.5 Philosophical Issues

According to legend, the Pythagoreans were the first to propose a philosophy of
mathematics, in fact a very simple ‘theory of everything’: all is number. It is
said that they observed the role of whole numbers in musical harmony and
jumped from there to the conclusion that the whole universe is ruled by whole
numbers and their ratios. The echoes of this philosophy are still heard in phrases
like ‘the harmony of the spheres’.
Whatever its details may have been, the Pythagorean philosophy was dis-
pffiffiffi
rupted by the discovery of irrational quantities such as 2. Irrationals were
unacceptable as numbers, but unavoidable in geometry, since no one could deny
that if a square exists, then so does its diagonal. This led to the separation of
number theory and geometry seen in Euclid’s Elements but also to the theory
found in the Elements Book V. The ‘theory of proportions’ found in Book V
establishes a point of contact between (rational) numbers and geometric quan-
tities, though without fully reconciling the two.
Much of the subsequent history of mathematics, and its philosophy, grows
from the struggle to reconcile the concepts of number and quantity, or the
discrete and the continuous, or the rational (logical) and the visual (intuitive).
The development of mathematical philosophy accompanies this struggle, as we
will see in the sections that follow. At the end of each section I will give a
historical update, as it were, of philosophical developments, under the headings
of logic and intuition, meaning and existence, and discrete and continuous. As a
mathematician, I prefer to think in these terms, but I hope that philosophers will
be able to translate the philosophical content of my remarks into their own
preferred terms.

Intuition and logic. Probably in an attempt to work precisely with geometric

quantities, Euclid’s Elements is the ﬁrst known example of the axiomatic
approach to truth, whereby theorems are deduced from axioms by logic.
However, his axioms are incomplete, and there are frequent appeals to intui-
tion, one even in his ﬁrst proposition. Thus the Elements unintentionally
illustrates how hard it is to avoid unconscious assumptions in mathematical
reasoning.

Meaning and existence. Euclid also undercuts what we now consider to be the
axiomatic method by attempting to deﬁne primitive concepts such as ‘point’ and
‘line’. He also restricts the concept of ‘number’ essentially to the natural

Discrete and continuous. Because of its sensitivity to irrational quantities,

the Elements generally makes a clear separation between the concepts of
number and quantity, or between the discrete and the continuous. But Book
V begins a possible merger between the two, as we will see later. This
illustrates the sometimes opposing tendencies of mathematics and philoso-
phy. Mathematicians generally have the outlook expressed by Poincaré in
1908:

I think I have already said somewhere that mathematics is the art of giving the
same name to different things. It is enough that these things, though differing
in matter, should be similar in form, to permit of their being, so to speak, run
in the same mould. When language has been well chosen, one is astonished to
ﬁnd that all demonstrations made for a known object apply immediately to
many new objects: nothing requires to be changed, not even the terms, since
the names have become the same. (see Poincaré 1952, 34)

In other words, mathematicians consider things to be the same if they have

the same behaviour. Philosophers, however, like to make distinctions: they
look for reasons why things should not be considered the same. Sometimes a
distinction seems to be justiﬁed, as was the Greek distinction between
numbers and geometric quantities such as length. But mathematics seeks to
erase distinctions where possible. The long evolution of the real number
concept can be viewed as a project to erase the distinction between number
and quantity and, with it, the distinction between real number theory and
geometry.

2 Inﬁnity in Greek Mathematics

PREVIEW
Although number and length are mostly kept separate in the Elements, there is
one process that Euclid applied to both – the Euclidean algorithm, which
operates on a pair by ‘repeatedly subtracting the smaller from the larger’.
When applied to a pair of positive integer numbers (or more generally, to a
pair of positive integer multiples of a unit length) the algorithm terminates
because positive integers cannot decrease forever. But when applied to a pair of
lengths in irrational ratio, the algorithm does not terminate. Indeed, Euclid used
non-termination of his algorithm as a criterion for irrationality, thus bringing
inﬁnity into the discussion of irrationality.

The number-free theory of area, used by Euclid to prove the Pythagorean

theorem, works quite smoothly for areas of polygons. But a similar approach to
volume fails for even simple polyhedra, such as the tetrahedron. Euclid was able
to find the volume of the tetrahedron by decomposing it into infinitely many
prisms, thus bringing infinity into the theory of volume. The Greek theory of
area also had difficulty with curved regions, which obviously cannot be decom-
posed into finitely many polygons. However, Archimedes was able to find the
area of a parabolic segment by decomposing it into infinitely many triangles.
Nevertheless, the Greeks sought to ‘avoid infinity’ by considering arbitrary
finite sums instead of infinite sums.

2.1 Irrationality and Non-termination

The Euclidean algorithm is introduced in Book VII of the Elements, as a method
for ﬁnding the greatest common divisor of two positive integers. As Euclid says,
one ‘continually subtracts the less from the greater’; more precisely, if a > b, one
replaces the pair a;b by a b;b. Since positive integers cannot decrease forever,
the algorithm always terminates. For example, with the pair 13, 8, one gets

13; 8 → 5; 8 → 5; 3 → 2; 3 → 2; 1 → 1; 1:

When a pair of identical numbers is obtained, that number is gcdða;bÞ, because

all common divisors of the pair are preserved by subtraction. Thus our example
shows that gcdð13; 8Þ ¼ 1.
In Book X of the Elements Euclid generalizes the algorithm to lengths a and
b, in which case it may not terminate. For example, if (using modern notation)
pffiffiffi
the lengths are a ¼ 2 and b ¼ 1, then the first two steps are
pffiffiffi pffiffiffi pffiffiffi pffiffiffi
2; 1 → 1; 2 1 → 2 2; 2 1:
pffiffiffi pffiffiffi
At this point it may be noticed that 2 2 and 2 1 are in the same ratio
pffiffiffi
as 2 and 1. It is not clear whether the Greeks noticed this (though they
were probably aware of something similar), but it is clear by basic algebra
because
pffiffiffi pffiffiffi pffiffiffi
2 2 ¼ 2ð 2 1Þ:
pffiffiffi pffiffiffi pffiffiffi
Since 2 2 and 2 1 are in the same ratio as 2 and 1, applying the
Euclidean algorithm to them will produce, in two steps, yet another pair in that
ratio – and so on, forever.
Whether or not Euclid knew this particular example, he realized that the
algorithm does not terminate on a pair of lengths in irrational ratio (Book X,

Figure 6 Equality of parallelogram and rectangle.

Figure 7 Equality of triangle and half rectangle.

Proposition 2). Thus the Euclidean algorithm elegantly separates rational from
irrational, by separating termination from non-termination; that is, ﬁnite from
inﬁnite.

2.2 Areas and Volumes

In Book I of the Elements Euclid shows equality of various regions by
adding or subtracting equal triangles. For example, Figure 6 shows that a
parallelogram equals a rectangle of the same base and height. And Figure
7 shows that a triangle equals half a rectangle with the same base and
height.
There are also decompositions showing that any rectangle equals a rectan-
gle with a given base. Using this fact, it is possible to find a rectangle equal to
any polygon, by cutting the polygon into finitely many triangles. Now if (as in
the case of the triangle) one region R equals a rational multiple r of some
standard region we can take as a unit, then it is compatible with Euclid to let
the number r ‘measure’ the region R in the same way that we measure the area
of R. Under these conditions we will speak of numerical ‘areas’ and ‘volumes’
from now on.
Now a curved region obviously cannot be cut into finitely many triangles.
The best we can hope for is a decomposition into infinitely many triangles
which, if we are lucky, might be comprehensible. Archimedes had a brilliant
success by this method, finding the area of a parabolic segment.
The parabolic segment is filled with triangles in the manner shown in Figure
8: first the black triangle, then two dark grey triangles below it, then four lighter
grey triangles below them, and so on.
Each triangle is half the width of the triangle above it, and a calculation shows
that each group (of one, two, four, … triangles) has total area one-fourth the area

Figure 8 Filling the parabolic segment with triangles.

Figure 9 Filling the tetrahedron with prisms.

of the group above it. Thus, if the black triangle has area 1, then the total area of
the triangles is the inﬁnite sum
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
1 þ þ þ þ þ ...:
4 4 4 4

If we set
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
S¼1 þ þ þ þ þ ...;
4 4 4 4

then clearly
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
4S ¼ 4 þ 1 þ þ þ þ þ ...;
4 4 4 4

so 4S S ¼ 4 and therefore S ¼ 4=3. (This risky calculation with inﬁnite sums

gives a quick way to guess the answer. We will see how Archimedes did it more
carefully in the next section.)
The tetrahedron is ﬁlled with prisms, as indicated in Figure 9. After two
prisms are removed (one light grey, the other darker grey), two smaller tetra-
hedra remain, from which we again remove prisms, and continue.
In this way Euclid found that the volume of the tetrahedron is a similar
inﬁnite sum,

2 3 4
1 1 1 1
þ þ þ þ ...;
4 4 4 4

which equals 1/3.

2.3 The Method of Exhaustion

The last two sections have shown examples of infinite processes in Greek
mathematics. Those in the previous section are notable for finding a rational
area or volume apparently not obtainable by finite processes. Nevertheless, the
Greeks were suspicious of infinity and they tried to avoid it as far as possible. In
many cases they were able to do so by what is called the method of exhaustion.
The method is so called because one confirms a result x, obtained by an
infinite process, by exhausting all other possibilities (less than x or greater than
x). Typically, the other possibilities are exhausted by supposing the process to
run for an arbitrary, but finite, number of steps. We can illustrate the method of
exhaustion in the case of Archimedes’ evaluation of the area of a parabolic
segment, replacing the infinite processes by arbitrary finite ones. The infinite
processes involved in this example are as follows:

1 Filling the parabolic segment with infinitely many triangles. We can argue
that the triangles do fill the segment (or ‘exhaust’ it) by showing that any
given point inside the parabola falls inside some triangle. This is a purely
finite, if tedious, argument.
2 Showing that the infinite series
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
1 þ þ þ þ þ . . . has sum 4=3:
4 4 4 4

This can be done by ﬁnding the ﬁnite sum

2 n
1 1 1 4 1 1 n
Sn ¼ 1 þ þ þ ... þ ¼ :
4 4 4 3 3 4

We see that Sn ‘exhausts’ all numbers < 4=3 by taking arbitrarily large values of
n
n, because 14 then becomes arbitrarily small. And obviously Sn cannot be
> 4=3, so the value that remains, 4/3, is necessarily the sum of the infinite
series.
Thus the area of the parabolic segment (and similarly the volume of the
tetrahedron) can be found by using arbitrary finite sums instead of infinite sums.
This is typical of the way the Greeks avoided actual use of infinity. We will see a
similar ‘avoidance of infinity’ in the next section.

2.4 The Theory of Proportions

A common stumbling block for readers of the Elements was Book V, on the so-
called theory of proportions. This theory, thought to be due to Eudoxus, is about
the concept of length and its relation to the concept of number. Its main
difficulty is basically the difficulty we meet today in trying to understand the
real number line. There is a lesser difficulty due to the Greek habit of working
with ratios (of integers or lengths), which stopped them from working with
rational numbers and a unit length. But I will gloss over this in order to
concentrate on the main difficulty – which is of course the existence of irra-
tionals – by admitting rational numbers and a unit of length.
When rational numbers are admitted it becomes clear that they are the key
ingredient in the theory of proportions. Given a unit length 1, we also have a
rational length l ¼ m=n for any positive integers m; n. It is the length such that n
copies of l equal m copies of 1. These rational lengths determine, for any lengths
a and b, whether a < b; a ¼ b, or a > b. Namely

a < b ⇔ there is a rational m=n with a < m=n < b;

a > b ⇔ there is a rational m=n with a > m=n > b;
a ¼ b ⇔ neither a < b nor a > b:

Thus if a < b or a > b, there is a pair m; n that ‘witnesses’ the fact: either
because a < m=n < b or a > m=n > b. But if a ¼ b, there is no single rational
number m=n that witnesses this fact (unless a and b are rational): a equals b only
if all rational numbers less than a are less than b, and conversely. Thus equality
is more elusive than inequality, and irrational lengths are more elusive than
rational lengths.
Because of their suspicion of infinity, the Greeks did not take the step of
saying that an irrational length is determined by the rational lengths on either
side of it, since this determination involves infinitely many rational lengths. In
Section 6 we will see what happened when this step was taken, in the nineteenth
century.
Even the test for inequality raises an interesting philosophical point. Suppose
that 0 < b and hence that 0 < m=n < b for some positive integers m and n. It
follows, multiplying by n, that 0 < m < nb. Thus the theory of proportions
assumes what would later be called the Archimedean axiom or non-existence of
infinitesimals: if b > 0 then some integer multiple nb > 1. This became a hot
issue in the seventeenth century, when mathematicians found it convenient to
assume the existence of infinitesimals; that is, they supposed there were b > 0
such that no integer multiple nb > 1 (see Section 4.3).

2.5 Archimedes and Actual Inﬁnity

Like the method of exhaustion, the theory of proportions avoids infinity by
dealing instead with the ‘arbitrary finite’. In particular, it employs the arbitrary
finite integers m; n to witness that a < b because a < m=n < b. Indeed, when
a ¼ b is proved it is done by exhaustion; namely, by showing that a < m=n < b
and a > m=n > b fail for any possible pair m; n.
An infinity that can be ‘exhausted’ in this way by finite parts was called a
‘potential infinity’ by the Greeks, and only potential infinities were allowed in
mathematical argument. The aim of the method of exhaustion was to avoid
actual infinity; that is, viewing an infinite collection or process as a completed
whole. For over 2000 years after Euclid the official practice of mathematicians
was to accept only potential infinities, and to avoid actual infinities by appealing
to the method of exhaustion. This was the theory, but in practice actual infinities
were often used as a shortcut to results that (hopefully) could later be proved
rigorously by the method of exhaustion.
As far as we know, the first to use actual infinities was Archimedes, in a work
called The Method. This work was lost and unknown for centuries before being
rediscovered in 1906, so it did not influence the development of mathematics or
its philosophy. However, it does show that there was more to Greek thinking
about infinity than one would gather from Euclid. Archimedes went far beyond
thinking that a sequence of discrete steps could be completed; he was even
willing to view the continuum of points on the line as a completed collection
(though probably without realizing that the continuum is a new kind of infinity).

2.6 Philosophical Issues

Euclid penetrated to the heart of the distinction between rational and irrational:
it is the difference between finite and infinite. Thus geometry, which accepts
irrational quantities, must also accept infinity in some form. So the logic of
geometry had to find a way of reasoning about infinity.

Intuition and logic. The Greeks tried as far as possible to avoid reasoning about
infinity. The origin of their fear of infinity is not completely clear, though Zeno’s
paradoxes show that the fear was present before Euclid’s time, and that Aristotle
tried to debunk it. The method of exhaustion was the mathematical response to
these philosophical debates: avoid reasoning about infinity by reasoning about
finite (but arbitrary) stages of an infinite process, and argue that they ‘exhaust all
possibilities’ except one – which possibility can therefore be deemed the result
of the infinite process.

Meaning and existence. Thus the method of exhaustion indirectly gives mean-
ing to the result of an inﬁnite process, without commitment to the existence of
actual inﬁnity.

Continuous and discrete. Processes with an inﬁnite number of discrete

steps could be accepted as ‘potential infinity’. But, in rejecting actual
infinity, the Greeks generally stayed well away from the idea of a ‘con-
tinuous infinity’. Perhaps Archimedes was an exception, because he
seemed willing to accept the continuum of points on the line as a
completed whole.
As mentioned in Section 1.5, the tendency of philosophy is to make
distinctions, while that of mathematics is to erase them where possible.
However, mathematics sometimes discovers distinctions that philosophy
(and previous mathematics) had not foreseen. Infinity is a case in point. For
millennia, mathematics accepted the distinction between potential and actual
infinity and, following philosophy, considered actual infinity unacceptable.
But since the late nineteenth century, actual infinity has not only become
acceptable (to most mathematicians) but also subject to unforeseen and
complicated distinctions. This has led to new controversies about where to
draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable infinity. We will see how
this happened in Section 7.

3 Imaginary Numbers
PREVIEW
pffiffiffi
Resistance to treating quantities such as 2 as numbers gradually eroded over
the centuries, possibly because of the rise of algebra in India and the Islamic
world. In India, pBrahmagupta
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi around 600 CE gave essentially the modern
b b2 4ac
solution x ¼ 2a of the quadratic equation ax2 þ bx þ c ¼ 0, and it
became accepted that the square root of a positive number was itself a number.
At the same time, there was reluctance to use negative numbers (though
Brahmagupta accepted them), and the square root of a negative number seemed
nonsensical. Thus when b2 4ac < 0 it seemed natural to say that
ax2 þ bx þ c ¼ 0 had no solution.
Things changed in the sixteenth century when Italian mathematicians dis-
covered the solution of the cubic equation x3 ¼ px þ q in the form
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
r ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
3 q q2 p3 3 q q2 p3
x¼ þ þ :
2 2 3 2 2 3

This formula called not only for acceptance of square roots and cube roots, but
also for square roots of negative numbers – because there are equations for
2 3
which there is an obvious real solution yet q2 p3 < 0.
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
For a long time, numbers such as 1 were called impossible, and they are
still called ‘imaginary’. Yet they were accepted in mathematics, at least to prove
results about real numbers, because they were useful and they did not (usually)
lead to contradiction. Eventually, the system of real and imaginary numbers
came to be viewed as natural, both algebraically and geometrically.

3.1 Quadratic and Cubic Equations

As we have seen in Section 1, algebra was hamstrung in Greek mathematics by
the geometric interpretation of product. Under the geometric interpretation,
products of more than three terms have no meaning, and products of different
dimensions cannot be added. These restrictions do not apply to the product of
numbers, so in a contest between algebra for numbers and algebra for lengths,
algebra for numbers clearly wins.
This is roughly what happened in the development of algebra, which was
initially a symbolism for solving problems (especially equations) about num-
bers. Until about 1600, algebra was a discipline that solved equations in
numbers but it fell back on geometry to justify its moves – because Euclid’s
Elements was still the model for mathematical proof.
The shift from geometry to an algebra of numbers began with Diophantus,
around 200 CE, in the last phase of classical Greek mathematics. Diophantus
used a symbolism that allowed products of four or more elements. But because
he was interested in finding rational solutions of equations he used only the
pffi
rational operations þ; ; ;÷ ; not the square root operation .
pffi
The operation occurs in the general solution
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
b b2 4ac
x¼ (*)
2a
of the quadratic equation ax2 þ bx þ c ¼ 0. Essentially, this solution was
given by Brahmagupta in India around 600 CE, though in words rather than
symbols. The study of equations spread from India to the Islamic world, where
it was given the name ‘algebra’ by al-Khwarizmi around 800 CE. From there it
passed to Italy, where the next major advance occurred: the solution of cubic
equations.
The solution of x3 ¼ px þ q was discovered by Scipione del Ferro around
1500 but was kept as a ‘secret weapon’ for the mathematical contests that were
then popular. It was rediscovered by Tartaglia in the 1530s and first published in

the Ars Magna of Cardano (1545). The so-called Cardano formula for the
solution is
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
r ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
3 q q2 p3 3 q q2 p3
x¼ þ þ : (**)
2 2 3 2 2 3

Mathematicians by this time were willing to accept square and cube roots of
positive numbers, but they balked at square roots of negative numbers. Of
course square roots of negative numbers already occur in the quadratic formula
(*) when b2 < 4ac. But in this case one is free to say that the equation
ax2 þ bx þ c ¼ 0 has no solution.
It was otherwise with the solution (**) of the cubic equation.

3.2 Bombelli’s Algebra of Imaginary Numbers

The equation x3 ¼ px þ q can have an obvious solution, even though the
2 3
Cardano formula contains the square root of a negative number q2 p3 .
This is the case, for example, for x3 ¼ 15x þ 4, which has the obvious solution
x ¼ 4.
For this equation the Cardano formula gives (after some simplification)
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
3 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 3 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
x ¼ 2 þ 11 1þ 2 11 1:

To reconcile this expression with the value x ¼ 4, Bombelli (1572) assumed that
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1 obeys the same algebraic rules as ordinary numbers. He kept his calcula-
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
tion a secret, but it is easy to reconstruct. Using the modern notation i for 1,
so i2 ¼ 1, one can check that

ð2 þ iÞ3 ¼ 2 þ 11i and ð2 iÞ3 ¼ 2 11i;

and therefore
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
3 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 3 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi p ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2 þ 11 1þ 2 11 1 ¼ 3 2 þ 11iþ 2 11i
3

qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
¼ ð2 þ iÞ3 þ ð2 iÞ3
3 3

¼ ð2 þ iÞ þ ð2 iÞ

¼ 4:

As many people have since remarked, it seems as though algebra is smarter than
we are!

At any rate, Bombelli’s example, and others like it, eventually convinced
mathematicians that it was safe to use ‘imaginary’ or ‘impossible’ numbers.
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Whatever 1 means, if anything, it seems to behave like an ordinary number
and to give correct results about ordinary numbers.

3.3 The Convenience of Imaginary Numbers

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mathematicians discovered many
situations in which known properties of ordinary numbers are more easily
stated, or explained, with the help of imaginary numbers. Here are some
examples.

1 The trigonometric formulas

cosðθ þ ’Þ ¼ cos θ cos ’ sin θ sin ’

sinðθ þ ’Þ ¼ sin θ cos ’ þ cos θ sin ’

are more concisely (and memorably) expressed by the single formula

cosðθ þ ’Þ þ i sinðθ þ ’Þ ¼ ðcos θ þ i sin θÞðcos ’ þ i sin ’Þ:

2 The latter formula can be even more concisely expressed by

eiðθþ’Þ ¼ eiθ ei’ ;

if we assume eix ¼ cos x þ i sin x (see Section 4.5 for a reason to do this).
This gives new meaning to the sine and cosine functions – as parts of the
imaginary exponential function.

3 If a;b;c;d are positive integers then the product of a2 þ b2 and c2 þ d 2 is itself

the sum of two integer squares. To ﬁnd the latter squares we use i2 ¼ 1 to
create the imaginary factorizations

a2 þ b2 ¼ a2 ðibÞ2 ¼ ða þ ibÞða ibÞ

c2 þ d 2 ¼ c2 ðidÞ2 ¼ ðc þ idÞðc idÞ;

using the identity x2 y2 ¼ ðx þ yÞðx yÞ. Combining the factorizations,

and again using the identity, we get

ða2 þ b2 Þðc2 þ d 2 Þ ¼ ½ða þ ibÞðc þ idÞ½ða ibÞðc idÞ

¼ ½ac bd þ iðad þ bcÞ½ac bd iðad þ bcÞ

¼ ðac bdÞ2 þ ðad þ bcÞ2 :

These examples suggest that imaginary numbers should be accepted, if only for
the sake of convenience. However, it is possible to do better than this. We can
give a convincing interpretation of imaginary numbers, which shows them to be
just as ‘real’ as ordinary numbers (and incidentally explains their role in
geometry and trigonometry). More conservatively, one can show how to elim-
inate imaginary numbers, from any argument that uses them, in favour of
ordinary numbers.

3.4 Realizing the Imaginary

A simple way to eliminate imaginary numbers from mathematics was intro-
duced by Hamilton (1835): replace a þ ib by the ordered pair ða;bÞ of real
numbers a;b, and deﬁne the sum and product of pairs by

ða1 ;b1 Þ þ ða2 ;b2 Þ ¼ ða1 þ a2 ;b1 þ b2 Þ

ða1 ;b1 Þ ða2 ;b2 Þ ¼ ða1 a2 b1 b2 ;a1 b2 þ a2 b1 Þ:

Then the pair for the sum ða1 þ ib1 Þ þ ða2 þ ib2 Þ is the sum of the pairs for
a1 þ ib1 and a2 þ ib2 , and the pair for the product is likewise the product of the
pairs. It follows that any statement about sum and product of numbers of the
form a þ ib is equivalent to one about real numbers, for example

ða1 þ ib1 Þða2 þ ib2 Þ ¼ c þ id ⇔ a1 a2 b1 b2 ¼ c and a1 b2 þ a2 b1 ¼ d:

Hence any argument involving i can be replaced by one involving real numbers
alone.
Because of this we say that the theory of complex numbers (as the numbers
a þ ib are called) is a conservative extension of the theory of real numbers. It is
‘conservative’ in the sense that any result about real numbers proved with use of
i can be proved without it. Hamilton’s construction shows that it is harmless to
assume that imaginary numbers exist, but at the same time it shows that there is
no need to assume they exist. Anything we can do with them we can do without
them, though perhaps not as easily.
For most mathematicians, what compels belief in the complex numbers is
that they give more than we asked for. It is as though they were always part of
the fabric of mathematics, but at ﬁrst we noticed only one small thread in the
solution of cubic equations. In fact, i not only gives solutions to cubic equations
but to all polynomial equations. This is the fundamental theorem of algebra that
we will say more about in Section 5.
Moreover, while i cannot lie on the line of real numbers, it makes perfect
sense for it to lie on a perpendicular line of imaginary numbers. All we have to

Figure 10 The geometry of a complex number.

do is imagine a plane of complex numbers, with a þ ib represented by the

point ða;bÞ at horizontal distance a from the origin O, and at vertical distance
b. Under this interpretation, multiplication by a þ ib has a geometric meaning
that is a sweeping generalization of i2 ¼ 1. Namely multiplication by a þ ib
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
magnifies the plane by a2 þ b2 (the distance of a þ ib from O) and rotates it
about O through angle θ ¼ tan1 ba. Figure 10 shows a þ ib in its geometric
context.
In particular, multiplication by i rotates the plane about O through a right
angle, and multiplication by cos θ þ i sin θ rotates it through angle θ. Thus
multiplication of complex numbers encapsulates all of basic geometry and
trigonometry. And this is just the beginning. As mentioned in the previous
section,

eiθ ¼ cos θ þ i sin θ;

so the complex numbers unite trigonometry with the exponential function. In

short, the complex numbers are probably the most powerful unifying and
simplifying force in higher mathematics. That is why mathematicians believe
in them.

3.5 Philosophical Issues

The emergence of algebra in India and the Islamic world did not at ﬁrst affect
the philosophy of mathematics. In fact, Euclid’s authority ruled algebra until the
sixteenth century. The Islamic algebraists justiﬁed their proofs by appeal to
geometric diagrams, and such proofs occur as late as Cardano (1545). It was
only around the end of the sixteenth century, when modern algebraic symbolism
developed, that algebraic calculation became a new force in mathematics.
Symbolic algebra paved the way for other branches of symbolic mathematics,
such as calculus, which the philosophy of mathematics eventually had to take
into account. Nevertheless, for a long time it was hoped that Euclid could
remain as the foundation of mathematics.
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 21

Intuition and logic. The Italian algebraists at first justified the rules of algebra
(as did their Islamic predecessors) by appeal to geometric logic. But Bombelli’s
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
calculations with 1 suggested that algebra had an independent logic of its
own.

Meaning and existence. Imaginary numbers at ﬁrst were accorded merely

‘symbolic existence’, allowing them to be used in calculations that had real
results. In becoming a system of rules for manipulating symbols, algebra began
to break free from its geometric foundation. Yet, surprisingly, imaginary num-
bers provide new insights into geometry.

Discrete and continuous. The Greek belief that only rational numbers were
really numbers gradually eroded under the inﬂuence of algebra, which urged
acceptance of square and cube roots, and of trigonometry, which urged accep-
tance of the sine and cosine functions. However, there was not yet a coherent
theory of real numbers – only the belief that they could be modelled by the
points of a line.

4 Calculus and Inﬁnitesimals

Preview
The influence of algebra grew in the seventeenth century, first in the algebraic
geometry of Fermat and Descartes, then in the infinitesimal calculus of Newton
and Leibniz. In geometry, algebra made quick work of ancient problems about
lines and conic sections and gave easy access to a vast class of curves barely
touched by the Greeks. The algebraic approach to geometry was made possible
by arithmetization of the line and plane: identifying points of the line with real
numbers and points of the plane with pairs of real numbers. Under this identi-
fication, many curves could be described by polynomial equations, pðx;yÞ ¼ 0,
allowing geometric properties to be extracted by algebraic manipulation.
Calculus extended this idea by allowing algebraic operations on infinite-
simals – quantities that behaved like non-zero numbers in calculations but
were otherwise negligible. For example, the slope of a curve pðx;yÞ ¼ 0
could be calculated as a quotient dy=dx of infinitesimals dx and dy, where
dx was taken to be an infinitesimal increase in x and dy the corresponding
increase in y.
The properties ascribed to infinitesimals were close to, if not actually, incon-
sistent. Yet, like imaginary numbers, infinitesimals seemed easy and safe to use.
Mathematicians believed that, if challenged, they could reproduce the results of
infinitesimal calculus by the more rigorous method of exhaustion. The magic of
infinitesimal calculus was its ability to replace complicated exhaustion
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22 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

arguments by routine calculations, so once again convenience overcame any

doubts about the existence of the mathematical objects being used.

4.1 Inﬁnite Series

We have now seen that Euclid and Archimedes used sums of infinite series to
find certain areas and volumes. The series in question were instances of the
infinite geometric series a þ ar þ ar2 þ ar3 þ . . . ; which has sum 1r
a
when
jrj < 1. This value can be rigorously confirmed by the method of exhaustion.
We find that the finite series

a arnþ1
a þ ar þ ar2 þ ar3 þ . . . þ arn ¼ ;
1r
and this finite sum (for a > 0 and jrj < 1) is clearly less than 1ra
but able to
a nþ1
exceed any number less than 1r, since r can be made arbitrarily small by
choosing n sufficiently large.
Therefore, the finite sums ‘exhaust’ all numbers less than 1r a
and so the
a
infinite sum must equal 1r .
When calculus was invented, around 1665, the geometric series was the
starting point for many other results on infinite series. However, before calculus
was invented, remarkable results about infinite series in trigonometry were
discovered in fifteenth-century India. The main contributor to these discoveries
was Madhava (c. 1340–c. 1425) and his methods were largely algebraic. The
starting point was again the geometric series, but new series were also used
ingeniously, notably the series

1k þ 2k þ 3k þ . . . þ nk for k ¼ 1; 2; 3; . . . :

The latter series played a role later taken over by calculus in proving that

x3 x5 x7
tan1 x ¼ x þ þ . . . for 1 < x ≤ 1:
3 5 7
Madhava also discovered the series for the sine and cosine functions:

x3 x5 x7
sinx ¼ x þ þ ...
3! 5! 7!
x2 x4 x6
cosx ¼ 1 þ þ . . . :
2! 4! 6!
The latter series, and the related series for ex, were rediscovered in Europe in the
seventeenth century, and they played an important role in the development of
calculus. The independent discovery of these results in India and Europe was

perhaps the most remarkable example of the cultural universality of mathe-

matics since the Pythagorean theorem.

4.2 Algebraic Geometry

Inﬁnite processes on numbers were one prerequisite for calculus. Another was the
application of algebra to geometry, or algebraic geometry for short. The latter
became possible after algebraic symbolism came to maturity in the sixteenth century,
allowing calculations with polynomials to be made just as easily as with numbers.
By the 1630s, Fermat and Descartes were able to give an algebraic solution of a
problem that is usually solved by calculus today: ﬁnding the tangents to an algebraic
curve. The setup for this problem is one that is now familiar to high school students.
Each point P in the plane is given by an ordered pair ðx;yÞ of numbers, where

x ¼ horizontal distance to P from the origin O;

y ¼ vertical distance to P from the origin O:

An algebraic curve is one whose points satisfy an equation pðx;yÞ ¼ 0, where p

is a polynomial.
For example, the points at distance 1 from O satisfy x2 þ y2 ¼ 1 so the
equation for the unit circle is x2 þ y2 1 ¼ 0. Another example is the parabola
y ¼ x2 , or y x2 ¼ 0.
This leads to a classiﬁcation of curves by the degree of the polynomial. If p is
of degree 1 – that is pðx;yÞ ¼ ax þ by þ c – then pðx;yÞ ¼ 0 is the equation of a
line. If pðx;yÞ is of degree 2, then Fermat and Descartes discovered (indepen-
dently) that pðx;yÞ ¼ 0 is one of the conic sections studied by the Greeks. Apart
from degenerate cases, where the plane cutting the cone meets it in a point or
lines, these are the ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas. Typical examples of
these three types are shown in Figure 11.
Now a tangent to a curve k is a line l that meets k at a point ‘multiply’, in the
sense that there is a multiple solution to the equation for x that results from

Figure 11 Ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola.

Figure 12 A tangent and a nearby line.

substituting the expression for y in l in the equation pðx;yÞ ¼ 0. This precise

algebraic condition captures the vague idea that l meets k at a single isolated point
0
P, but that any line l through P and close to l meets k in P and at least one other
0
point P near P. Figure 12 shows the situation. The ‘double contact point’ P of l
0 0 0
is the limit of the two contact points P;P of l , as the line l approaches l.
For example, the line y ¼ 2x 1 is tangent to the parabola y ¼ x2 at x,
because when we substitute y ¼ 2x 1 in y ¼ x2 we get the equation
2x 1 ¼ x2 , or x2 2x þ 1 ¼ 0. This equation can be rewritten ðx 1Þ2 ¼ 0,
which shows that it has the double solution x ¼ 1.
Similar calculations (though naturally more complicated if the curve has
higher degree) allow us to ﬁnd the tangents to any algebraic curve. However,
ﬁnding the area between an algebraic curve and the x-axis is a more formidable
problem, even for the curve y ¼ 1=x. This is where the need for calculus
becomes acute.

4.3 Inﬁnitesimal Calculus

The algebraic criterion for tangency is simple to state, though it can be hard to
use. A more serious objection is that it applies only to algebraic curves, and
some physically natural curves are not algebraic. One famous example is the
catenary, the shape of a hanging chain. The catenary looks rather like a parabola,
but it is not, so another method is needed to find its tangents. In fact, even for
algebraic curves a simpler method is desirable – one that finds the slope at any
point. A better method is that of differential calculus, a system that arose from
the algebra and geometry of hypothetical entities called infinitesimals.

Figure 13 Inﬁnitesimal geometry of area.

Inﬁnitesimals were used by many of the early exponents of calculus, starting

in the 1630s and coming to maturity with the infinitesimal calculus of Leibniz in
the 1680s. Leibniz introduced the notations dx;dy;dz and the like for infinitesi-
mals, which he seemed to view as quantities smaller than ordinary numbers, yet
non-zero. For example, the slope of a curve at a point ðx;yÞ was viewed as the
slope dy=dx between ðx;yÞ and a point ðx þ dx;y þ dyÞ on the curve ‘infinitesi-
mally close’ to ðx;yÞ.
Given an equation y ¼ f ðxÞ for the curve, it was generally easy to calculate
the slope dy=dx. Take the parabola y ¼ x2 for example. In this case,

dy ¼ ðx þ dxÞ2 x2 ¼ 2x dx þ ðdxÞ2 ;

dy 2x dx þ ðdxÞ2
¼ ¼ 2x þ dx:
dx dx

At this stage one feels free to neglect dx and conclude that the slope of y ¼ x2 for
any value of x is 2x. (In particular, when x ¼ 1 the slope is 2, so the equation of
the tangent at this point is y ¼ 2x 1, as found by conventional algebra in the
previous section.)
Similar calculations with dx and dy easily yield the slope of any algebraic
curve, and hence the tangent, at any point on the curve. In particular, the slope of
y ¼ xn is nxn1 . But this is just a small taste of the magic of infinitesimals. They
also allow the calculation of curved areas, such as the area under a curve
y ¼ f ðxÞ. To do this one views the area as a function AðxÞ of x, taking the region
between a fixed value a and a variable value x, as in Figure 13.
An infinitesimal increase dx in x produces an infinitesimal increase dA in
area, which we can write

dA ¼ f ðxÞdx;

since the extra strip dA of area has width dx and height that differs only
inﬁnitesimally from f ðxÞ. (We are again choosing a convenient moment to
neglect inﬁnitesimals.) We conclude, dividing both sides by dx, that

dAðxÞ
¼ f ðxÞ:
dx
In other words, AðxÞ is a function whose graph has slope is f ðxÞ. Thus ﬁnding
areas under curves is the inverse problem to ﬁnding slopes.
If f ðxÞ is a function we have already found as a slope dy=dx, then we can
conclude that the area function AðxÞ is the same as y, at least within a constant.
For example, if AðxÞ is the area under the parabola y ¼ x2 between 0 and x, then

dA
¼ x2 ;
dx
and we may conclude AðxÞ ¼ 13 x3 , because dy dx ¼ x when y ¼ 3 x , and the
2 1 3

functions AðxÞ and y agree when x ¼ 0.

This, in a nutshell, is the infinitesimal calculus of Leibniz. The inverse relation
between the area and tangent problems is called its fundamental theorem. Newton
discovered a similar calculus, though without the convenient and suggestive dx
notation. The art of infinitesimal calculus was basically the algebra and geometry
of infinitesimals, allied with some good judgement about when to ‘neglect’
infinitesimals. (For example, divide by dx before neglecting it!)

4.4 Inﬁnitesimals: Criticism and Avoidance

Infinitesimals were a bit like imaginary numbers. They seemed to contradict
accepted principles – just as imaginaries contradicted the principle that squares
are positive, infinitesimals contradicted the Archimedean axiom for geometric
quantities, stated in Section 2.4 – yet they enabled calculations that were
otherwise difficult or impossible. For mathematicians of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries this was generally good enough reason to accept them.
But in another way infinitesimals were not like imaginaries. While it is true
that imaginaries are not part of the ordinary number system, that system can
easily be enlarged to accommodate them – for example, by defining imaginaries
as ordered pairs of ordinary numbers, as Hamilton did in 1835. It is not nearly as
easy, or convenient, to enlarge the number system to include infinitesimals. It
was not even known to be possible until the twentieth century, long after
mathematicians had decided that it was better to avoid infinitesimals the way
Euclid and Archimedes avoided infinity.
When infinitesimal calculus was in its infancy it was fairly easy, though
tedious, to replace infinitesimal arguments by the method of exhaustion. But as
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 27

inﬁnitesimal algebra and geometry grew in power, and faith in its correctness
grew stronger, it became a thankless task to rewrite arguments in the rigorous
ancient manner. As early as 1659, Huygens wrote,

Mathematicians will never have enough time to read all the discoveries in
Geometry (a quantity which is increasing from day to day and seems likely in
this scientiﬁc age to develop to enormous proportions) if they continue to be
presented in a rigorous form according to the manner of the ancients. (see
Huygens 1659, 337)

Philosophers rightly mocked the concept of inﬁnitesimals – Berkeley

called them ‘ghosts of departed quantities’ – because of the loose and
sometimes inconsistent way they were used by mathematicians. But mathe-
maticians did not completely dispense with inﬁnitesimals until forced to do
so for mathematical reasons. And when they did it was part of a general
revolution in mathematics that replaced geometry by arithmetic in the foun-
dations of mathematics. We will see how this came about in the next two
sections.

4.5 Complex Analysis

Calculus and imaginary numbers, though both had dubious origins, formed a
powerful alliance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most
remarkable allies were the circular and exponential functions, which were
studied separately in the seventeenth century and found to be expressible by
inﬁnite series. Around 1670 Newton discovered the series for the exponential
function,

x x2 x3
ex ¼ 1 þ þ þ þ ...;
1! 2! 3!
and he and others rediscovered the sine and cosine series that had already been
discovered in India:

x2 x4 x6
cos x ¼ 1 þ þ ...;
2! 4! 6!
x x3 x5 x7
sin x ¼ þ ...:
1! 3! 5! 7!
Replacing x by ix in the series for ex yields the miraculous formula

eix ¼ cos x þ i sin x;

discovered by Euler (1748). This formula not only allows sine and cosine to be
expressed in terms of exponentials, namely
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28 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

Figure 14 Product of lengths via similarity.

1 1
cos x ¼ ðeix þ eix Þ; sin x ¼ ðeix eix Þ;
2 2i

but also draws attention to their ‘hyperbolic’ analogues:

1 1
cosh x ¼ ðex þ ex Þ; sinh x ¼ ðex ex Þ:
2 2

This analogy may help to explain a wild conjecture of Lambert (1766, §82).
Lambert introduced the hyperbolic functions and was no doubt aware of the
formulas of spherical trigonometry, which involve sine and cosine. He may then
have guessed that the analogous formulas involving hyperbolic sine and cosine
describe trigonometry on a ‘sphere of imaginary radius’. If so, this could explain
his 1766 conjecture that non-Euclidean geometry may hold on an imaginary
sphere. (See also Sections 6.2 and 6.5 for more about non-Euclidean geometry
and Lambert’s imaginary sphere.)

4.6 Philosophical Issues

Before discussing calculus, there is an important by-product of the Descartes
(1637) book on algebraic geometry that should be mentioned – multiplication of
lengths. As we mentioned in Section 1.3, there is a natural sum of lengths which
is itself a length, but Euclid and his successors took the product of two lengths to
be a box, which severely curtailed any algebra of lengths. But there is another
way to deﬁne product of lengths, based on the proportionality of similar
triangles (Figure 14).
To do so we choose a unit length, marked 1 in Figure 14, and construct the
similar triangles containing the lengths a and b in the positions shown. Then it
follows by proportionality that, just as the continuation of length 1 is length b,
the continuation of length a is length ab. Descartes used this fact to deﬁne the
product of lengths, thus giving lengths an algebraic structure like that of
numbers. He also pointed out a simple geometric construction (also involving
similar triangles) for the square root of any length. Thus Descartes (1637) swept

away some of the ancient problems posed by the existence of irrational lengths:
lengths did behave like numbers after all, and it was reasonable for the square
root of any number to be a number.
But, as soon as one philosophical difficulty was removed, calculus
created another. In fact, the invention of calculus disrupted the philoso-
phy of mathematics perhaps more than any event since the discovery of
irrational quantities. Philosophers rightly questioned the concept of infi-
nitesimal, but mathematicians at first ignored their criticisms and contin-
ued to believe they could obtain calculus results by Euclid’s methods
(though they seldom actually did so). There was a stalemate which would
not be broken until after 1800, when mathematicians had to concede that
Euclid was, after all, not an adequate foundation for mathematics.

Intuition and logic. Intuition played a leading role in calculus (and

still does), where ‘infinitesimally close points on a curve’ and ‘infinitesi-
mally thin strips’ were used to set up equations for calculating tangents
and areas. But, once the equations were found, the force of algebraic
symbolism (in the algebra of infinitesimals) prevailed. Mathematicians
believed in calculus because of its amazing success in solving problems in
geometry and mechanics. They also thought they were on solid ground,
believing that all their results could be obtained rigorously by the method
of exhaustion.

Meaning and existence. Yet, as Berkeley pointed out, the existence of inﬁni-
tesimals was highly dubious, so what explained their success? (Before
Berkeley, Hobbes had made harsh criticisms of calculus and of the use of
algebra in geometry. But he destroyed his credibility with mathematicians by
proposing an untenable account of the circle – claiming that it contains only
ﬁnitely many points – and claiming thereby to solve the ancient problem of
‘squaring the circle’.)

Discrete and continuous. Then again, inﬁnitesimals provided a new bridge

(albeit rickety) between the discrete and continuous. The picture of the con-
tinuum was unclear, and perhaps contradictory, yet one could correctly calculate
lengths and areas. So perhaps infinitesimals could help explain the nature of the
continuum?
In the long run, the problems raised by infinitesimals were found to be
problems about the nature of the continuum, and particularly its nature as a
particular kind of infinite set. In the next two sections we will see how this
problem, and its philosophical implications, unfolded.

5 Continuous Functions and Real Numbers

PREVIEW
Calculus could deal with many specific functions, but the general function
concept remained vague. Around 1800, it became necessary to prove some
general properties of continuous functions – surprisingly, in order to prove the
fundamental theorem of algebra. After some dubious attempts to prove this
theorem in the eighteenth century, Gauss proposed several proofs. The most
convincing was one in Gauss (1816), which reduced the theorem to the special
case of odd-degree polynomials. Such a polynomial pðxÞ takes values that
change ‘continuously’ from positive (for large positive x) to negative (for
large negative x). It then seems obvious that the polynomial takes the value 0
somewhere, as required for the fundamental theorem.
Bolzano (1817) put his finger on the key assumption of Gauss’s proof, the
intermediate value theorem for continuous functions: if f ðxÞ is function that
varies continuously from negative to positive as x varies, then f ðxÞ ¼ 0 for some
value of x. Bolzano was able to give a satisfactory definition of continuity, but to
prove the intermediate value theorem he had to assume a property of the real
numbers, the least upper bound property: if S is a bounded set of real numbers,
then S has a least upper bound.
It was not possible to prove the least upper bound property from Euclid’s
geometric concept of real number, which had been thought adequate until then.
It was finally necessary to grapple with the unfinished business of reconciling
the discrete with the continuous.

5.1 The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra

We saw in Section 3.1 that there is a formula for solving cubic equations, first
published by Cardano in 1545. In the same book Cardano also published a
formula for solving quartic (fourth-degree) equations. Both formulas express
the solution in terms of the coefficients of the equation, the rational operations
þ; ; ;÷ ; and square and cube roots. This raised the hope of similar solutions
for higher-degree equations – solutions by radicals (n th roots), as they were
called. This hope was eventually dashed in the 1820s by Abel and Galois, who
showed that no such formulas exist for equations of fifth degree and higher.
But before solution by radicals was ruled out, Gauss had already suggested a
different approach to polynomial equations: be content to prove existence of a
solution rather finding it in a formula. Around 1800, Gauss gave several proofs
in this style, the key ingredient of which was appeal to properties of continuous
functions.

Figure 15 The graph of y ¼ x3 x þ 2.

The simpliﬁcation made possible by an existence proof can be illustrated in

the case of a cubic equation, say x3 x þ 2 ¼ 0. If one inspects the graph of
y ¼ x3 x þ 2 (Figure 15) then it is immediately clear why x3 x þ 2 ¼ 0 for
some value of x. The graph passes continuously from negative values (for large
negative values of x) to positive values (for large positive values of x), and hence
it somewhere takes the value 0.
The same argument applies to any polynomial of odd degree. In 1816 Gauss
extended it to polynomials of any degree by some ingenious algebra that
reduces the solution of an equation of degree 2n to the solution of a quadratic
(where the solution may be complex) and an equation of degree n. By repeatedly
halving the degree one reaches an equation of odd degree, and hence a solution
exists. Thus Gauss’s (1816) argument reduces the existence of solutions of any
polynomial equation – the fundamental theorem of algebra as it is now called –
to some algebra plus a seemingly obvious fact about continuous functions.
Gauss was happy to assume facts about continuity, but in fact he stood on the
brink of a new world of real analysis, in which the nature and properties of
continuous functions were the focus of attention.

5.2 The Intermediate Value Theorem

Remarkably, Gauss’s (1816) proof was immediately noticed, and its crucial idea
about continuous functions formulated as a theorem by Bolzano (1817). This is
what we now call the intermediate value theorem.

Intermediate Value Theorem. If f is a continuous function, deﬁned for x with

a ≤ x ≤ b, and if f ðaÞ < 0 and f ðbÞ > 0, then f ðcÞ ¼ 0 for some c between a and
b.
To state the theorem, Bolzano had to deﬁne what ‘continuous’ means, and he
came up with essentially the modern deﬁnition: f is continuous at x if, for each
ε > 0 there is a δ > 0 such that jx x 0 j < δ implies j f ðxÞ f ðx 0 Þj < ε.
(Speaking less formally: we can make f ðx 0 Þ as close as we please to f ðxÞ by

choosing x 0 sufﬁciently close to x.) Then f is simply continuous for x from a to b

if f is continuous at x whenever a ≤ x ≤ b.
Even when stated informally, it is not clear that this definition states what one
wants ‘continuous’ to mean. One would prefer to say ‘the graph of y ¼ f ðxÞ is
unbroken’, or something like that – in fact, something like the intermediate
value theorem. Bolzano’s extraordinary insight led him to a definition that
allows the vague global property of unbrokenness to follow from the precise
local property of continuity at a point.
Bolzano certainly had the right definition of continuity to prove the inter-
mediate value theorem, but his proof depended on an unproved property of
numbers. This was the least upper bound principle, stating that any bounded set
of numbers has a least upper bound. Bolzano could give only vague justification
for this principle, because he had only a vague, geometric, conception of the
number line. It was not possible to go further until the number concept had been
defined in purely arithmetic fashion.

5.3 Deﬁnition of Real Numbers

Some decades after Bolzano, whose work received little attention, Dedekind
experienced a similar dissatisfaction with intuitive arguments in calculus. In his
1872 booklet Continuity and Irrational Numbers, he wrote,

As professor in the Polytechnic School in Zürich I found myself for the first
time obliged to lecture on the elements of the differential calculus and felt
more keenly than ever before the lack of a really scientific foundation for
arithmetic. In discussing the notion of the approach of a variable magnitude to
a fixed limiting value, and especially in proving the theorem that a magnitude
which grows continually, but not beyond all limits, must certainly approach a
limiting value, I had recourse to geometric arguments … a more careful
investigation convinced me that this theorem, or any one equivalent to it,
can be regarded in some way as a sufficient basis for infinitesimal analysis. It
then only remained to discover its true origin in the elements of arithmetic
and thus at the same time to secure a real definition of the essence of
continuity. I succeeded Nov. 24, 1858.

By ‘continuity’, Dedekind means what we now call the connectedness of the

real numbers; informally, that they have ‘no gaps’. In this respect they contrast
pffiffiffi
with the rational numbers, which have a gap at the position of 2 and many
other places.
Now what, precisely, is a gap in the rational numbers? It is a partition of the
rational numbers into two sets L and U, such that each member of U is greater
than each member of L; L has no greatest member, and U has no least member.
pffiffiffi
The gap at 2, for example, has upper set U consisting of all positive rationals
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 33

with square greater than 2, and lower set L consisting of all the remaining
pffiffiffi
rational numbers. Since 2 is not rational, L has no greatest member and U has
no least. In general, each irrational corresponds to a gap in the rational numbers,
which Dedekind called a cut.
This idea is clearly similar to the treatment of irrational quantities in Book V
of Euclid’s Elements (Section 2.4) except that infinite sets are no longer
avoided. Dedekind’s bold but simple idea was to use infinite sets as mathema-
tical objects. A ‘gap in the rationals’ is then a meaningful mathematical object –
a pair of sets L;U with the above properties – which we can take to define an
irrational number. Thus the rationals and irrationals together form a number
system without gaps, which we now call the real number system ℝ.
By basing the real numbers on rational numbers in this way, Dedekind had
found their connectedness had its ‘true origin in the elements of arithmetic’.
Moreover, it is easy to show that the algebraic properties of the rational numbers
(such as a þ b ¼ b þ a and ab ¼ ba) carry over to the real numbers in a natural
way. And by using the set concept, Dedekind found it equally easy to prove
Bolzano’s least upper bound principle, and hence provide an arithmetic founda-
tion for real analysis.
To prove the least upper bound principle, we first represent each real number
x by a set Lx of rational numbers which is bounded above and ‘closed down-
ward’: that is, with the property that if r 2 Lx and s < r then s < Lx . For an
irrational number x, Lx is the L in the pair L;U that defines x; for a rational
number x we take Lx to be the set of rationals ≤ x. This representation has the
convenient property that the ordering of real numbers corresponds to set con-
tainment: namely, x ≤ y if and only if Lx ⊆ Ly .
Then if we have a bounded set of real numbers x, the sets Lx are also bounded,
and hence so is their union L. It follows that the real number l determined by the
set L is the least upper bound of the numbers x.

5.4 Counter-intuitive Curves

By banishing geometric intuition from the foundations of analysis, Bolzano and
Dedekind made it possible for counter-intuitive objects to be studied and
accurately analysed. For some mathematicians, this was shocking development,
and they ‘turned away in horror and disgust from this awful plague’ (to para-
phrase a letter from Hermite to Stieltjes in 1893). But for others it was welcome,
offering not only rigor but a way to actually sharpen one’s intuition and see
things that naive intuition could not.
The old formalism of inﬁnitesimals was not sharp enough, because it sug-
gests that a continuous function y ¼ f ðxÞ is one for which an inﬁnitesimal

Figure 16 The Koch polygon sequence.

change dx in x produces an inﬁnitesimal change dy in y. The notation then leads

us to believe that dy=dx exists; that is, the graph of a continuous y ¼ f ðxÞ has a
slope at each point. Indeed, Newton and other founders of calculus believed as
much. But they were wrong: Bolzano and other nineteenth-century mathema-
ticians discovered that there are continuous curves with no tangent at any point,
and other counter-intuitive properties.
A lovely example of a curve without tangents, obtained as the limit of the
sequence of polygonal curves, was given by von Koch (1904). The first five
polygons of the sequence are shown in Figure 16.
It is, I think, ‘intuitive’ that this sequence has a continuous limit curve. But
it can also be ‘seen’ that it has no tangents. It is clear from its construction
that the limit curve can be divided into four pieces (corresponding to the four
line segments in the second picture), each of which looks exactly the same as
the whole curve when magnified by 3. But if the curve had a tangent at any
point, the neighbourhood of that point would become straighter under
magnification.
Many other examples of bizarre objects that intuition can be persuaded to
grasp may be found in the book In Search of Infinity by Vilenkin (1995).
They show that our geometric intuition is capable of much more than
mathematicians thought, before the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, other
challenges to intuition arose in the nineteenth century, as we will see in the
next section.

5.5 Philosophical Issues

The proof of the intermediate value theorem is an inﬁnite construction that
captures the point c where f ðcÞ ¼ 0 by repeatedly halving the interval in which
c ought to lie. It is not so different from a classical proof by exhaustion
(assuming the existence of least upper bounds), except that it depends on
being ‘given’ the function f . In Bolzano’s time, it was not clear what this
meant, which created the suspicion that the intermediate value theorem is
purely an existence theorem, where the object c is claimed to exist but not
constructed.
Actually, construction of c is not a problem when f is a polynomial, as in the
fundamental theorem of algebra. But more existence theorems about continuous
functions were to follow, and they became a bone of contention with ‘con-
structivists’ later in the nineteenth century. In any case, the more problematic
part of Bolzano’s proof is deﬁning the real numbers so as to guarantee the least
upper bound property and also their algebraic structure: in short, the arithme-
tization of the line. This led to an eruption of unforeseen philosophical pro-
blems, as we will see in the next two sections.
But, in the immediate wake of Bolzano and Dedekind, there were already
several issues.

Intuition and logic. Contrary to the intuition that algebra is discrete, the
fundamental theorem of algebra seems to involve continuity. And the intuition
about continuous curves (and calculus in general) demands a deeper foundation,
in an arithmetic theory of real numbers.

Meaning and existence. What does it mean to prove existence, without giving a
formula for the object claimed to exist? What precisely are the real numbers,
and what explains their completeness; that is, their closure under various inﬁnite
operations? (Dedekind’s deﬁnition gives one answer; are there alternatives?)

Discrete and continuous. In particular, how best can we – avoiding the dubious
means of inﬁnitesimals – deﬁne the continuous (real numbers) in terms of the
discrete (natural numbers)?

6 From Non-Euclidean Geometry to Arithmetic

PREVIEW
Meanwhile, Euclid had been found wanting in another respect. For hundreds, if
not thousands, of years the parallel axiom had been considered an unnecessary
blemish on Euclid’s system. Many mathematicians had tried to prove it from
Euclid’s other axioms, but by 1800 hopes were fading. Some began to consider

the previously unthinkable: a non-Euclidean geometry in which the parallel

axiom was false.
This strange but wonderful geometry was at ﬁrst explored only hypotheti-
cally. But Beltrami (1868) found models of it, showing that non-Euclidean
geometry is just as consistent as Euclidean. With this discovery, Euclidean
geometry lost its privileged position at the foundation of mathematics (and as
the presumed geometry of physical space).
It was time to build a new foundation of mathematics, and arithmetic was
ready to take the place of geometry. Dedekind had found an arithmetic deﬁni-
tion of the real number line ℝ, on which it was possible to build a new
foundation of geometry and analysis: the real vector spaces of Grassmann.

6.1 The Parallel Axiom

As we saw in the previous section, mathematicians in the first half of the
nineteenth century lost faith in geometric intuition at the micro level, where it
failed to grasp the local nature of the line. During roughly the same time period
there was also a loss of faith in geometric intuition at the macro level, where it
failed to grasp the global nature of lines – in particular, the behaviour of
parallels.
Section 1.4 showed where the problem lies: in Euclid’s parallel axiom, which
implicitly claims the existence and uniqueness of parallels. The parallel axiom
was a very useful axiom, used in the proof of many signature theorems of
Euclid’s geometry, such as the Pythagorean theorem. In fact, even the existence
of squares depends on the parallel axiom, because unique parallels are needed to
prove that the angle sum of a triangle is π, and hence that the angle sum of a
quadrilateral is 2π. Another important consequence of the parallel axiom, which
chimes well with our experience, is that figures of any size can have the same
shape.
To many, theorems like these were more acceptable than the parallel axiom
itself, and proofs that they imply the parallel axiom were found. The ultimate
hope was that Euclid’s other axioms – which are certainly more plausible than
the parallel axiom – might be found to imply the parallel axiom, so that this
‘blemish’ on Euclid could be removed. Euclid’s other axioms say uncontrover-
sial things like: there is a unique line through any two points, lines are infinite,
and if two triangles agree in two sides and the included angle then they agree in
all sides and all angles.
If one takes the other axioms, and adds the axiom that parallels are not
unique, the hope was that a contradiction would be discovered. The first to
pursue the elusive contradiction was Saccheri (1733), in his book Euclid

Vindicated from Every Blemish. He found, not surprisingly, that these axioms
imply that the angle sum of a triangle is less than π and the angle sum of a
quadrilateral is less than 2π. He also found, more surprisingly, that two lines
could be asymptotic; that is, they could approach each other arbitrarily closely
without meeting. Saccheri found this ‘abhorrent to the nature of straight lines’,
but still it was not a contradiction. In fact, it was an accurate glimpse of the non-
Euclidean world.

6.2 Non-Euclidean Geometry

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, mathematicians began to explore
the hypothetical non-Euclidean world less sceptically. Gauss himself was
aware of the implications of non-unique parallels, but was afraid to publish
them. It was left to Bolyai and Lobachevsky, in the 1820s, to independently
develop and publish the basic theorems. There was also a hint, in the work of
Minding in the 1830s, that the formulas of non-Euclidean trigonometry made
sense on certain saddle-shaped surfaces. These formulas, which are like those
of spherical trigonometry except that sine and cosine are replaced by their
hyperbolic analogues, hold if ‘lines’ were taken to be geodesics – curves of
shortest length – on the surface. But Minding’s discovery fell short of being a
full realization of non-Euclidean geometry, because his surfaces were incom-
plete – they did not admit infinite ‘lines’ in every direction.
The difficulties of modelling non-Euclidean geometry were finally overcome
by Beltrami (1868) by relaxing the definition of ‘distance’. In fact, Beltrami
found several realizations, or models, of non-Euclidean geometry in which
‘lines’ were quite elegant and natural. Perhaps the easiest to grasp is the
conformal disc model shown in Figure 17.
In this figure, the ‘plane’ is the interior of the disc, so its ‘points’ are points
inside the disc boundary. Its ‘lines’ are circular arcs perpendicular to the disc
boundary and ‘angles’ are the actual angles between ‘lines’. (This is why the
model is called conformal, which means that it faithfully represents angles.) The
concept of distance is via a certain formula I will not state, but one can get a
general impression of ‘distance’ as follows.
The figure shows many ‘triangles’, each of which has the same shape because
it has angles π=2;π=3;π=7 (thus, like all non-Euclidean triangles, they have
angle sum < π). Since figures of the same shape have the same size in non-
Euclidean geometry, these triangles all have the same non-Euclidean size. In
particular, one sees that the non-Euclidean plane and its ‘lines’ are infinite,
because each line passes through infinitely many triangles on its way to the disc
boundary. One can also guess that the ‘lines’ are curves of shortest ‘length’,

Figure 17 The conformal disc model of the non-Euclidean plane.

because it appears that a ‘line’ gives the shortest path between any two points, if
measured by the number of triangles it passes through.

6.3 The Impact of Non-Euclidean Geometry

Non-Euclidean geometry finally killed any chance of deducing the parallel
axiom from Euclid’s other axioms, because the other axioms hold in
Beltrami’s model but the parallel axiom does not. One can see the failure of
the parallel axiom directly in Figure 18, where l is a ‘line’, P is a point outside l,
and two ‘lines’ m and n pass through P without meeting l.
Of course, there are models in which the parallel axiom does hold, so we see
that the axiom is independent of the other axioms, and it can be replaced by the
non-Euclidean parallel axiom, stating the existence of multiple parallels, with-
out fear of contradiction. The immediate effect of this discovery – the first
independence proof in mathematics – was increased distrust of Euclid’s
geometry as a foundation of mathematics, and increased support for arithmetic.
In fact, as we will see in the next section, an arithmetic approach to geometry
based on real vector spaces was ready to be rolled out, though few mathema-
ticians were ready to understand it.
Certainly, arithmetization of analysis was gaining support. Thanks to the
influence of Weierstrass, who had proposed an arithmetic definition of real
numbers independently of Dedekind in 1864, arithmetical proofs of the basic

Figure 18 Failure of the parallel axiom.

Figure 19 The Schwarz tessellation.

theorems on continuous functions (and hence of the fundamental theorem of

algebra) began to circulate in the 1870s.
Another remarkable discovery, by Poincaré and Klein in the 1880s, was that non-
Euclidean geometry was already present in mathematics. They noticed that there
was non-Euclidean periodicity in the behaviour of functions on the unit disc of
complex numbers, and that the phenomenon had been observed earlier, by Gauss,
Riemann, and Schwarz, without realizing its geometric signiﬁcance. Schwarz
(1872) even produced a diagram (Figure 19) of the disc that is none other than a
tessellation of the conformal disc model by congruent non-Euclidean triangles!
These discoveries cemented the position of non-Euclidean geometry in
mathematics, and indeed in the arithmetic of complex numbers.
Outside geometry, the independence of the parallel axiom foreshadowed
other independence proofs in mathematics. In cases where a sentence σ is not
P
known to be a consequence of axioms , one might hope to prove σ
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40 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers
P P
independent of by ﬁnding two models of : one satisfying σ and the other
satisfying the negation of σ. We will mention examples later.
The independence of the parallel axiom was also a harbinger of reverse
mathematics, a branch in which one seeks the ‘right axiom’ to prove a given
theorem. The parallel axiom is the right axiom to prove, say, the Pythagorean
theorem because the two are equivalent – given Euclid’s other axioms – but
neither can be proved from these axioms alone. Indeed, the parallel axiom is the
right axiom to prove the host of theorems shown to be equivalent to the parallel
axiom before its independence was known.
As we will see in Section 9, the phenomenon of independence became a big
story in twentieth-century mathematics, changing the way we think about truth
and proof.

6.4 Arithmetization of Geometry

In an obscure publication called Die Ausdehnungslehre (extension theory),
Grassmann (1844) introduced a revolutionary approach to geometry, based on
what we now call real vector spaces. Unfortunately, Grassmann’s style was
impenetrable to his contemporaries, even when he published a simplified ver-
sion in 1847, emphasizing the role of the inner product. The first to appreciate
his work was Peano (1888), who gave an axiom system for real vector spaces,
one of the first modern axiom systems. Interestingly, Grassmann credited the
germ of the idea to a sketchy manuscript of Leibniz from 1679 called
Characteristica Geometrica. If Grassmann really saw vector spaces in the
Characteristica he was the only one to do so (others have thought that the
Characteristica foreshadows the very different subject of combinatorial topol-
ogy). At the very least, Grassmann deserves most of the credit for recognizing
the vector space concept, and for seeing what must be added to make it truly
geometric.
Today we see vector spaces all over mathematics, so most mathematicians are
familiar with the basic ideas. There is a set V of objects called vectors, which
can be multiplied by real numbers and added. They include a zero vector 0 and,
for each vector a a vector a called the negative of a. Vectors are governed by
the following axioms. The first group say that the vector sum þ behaves like
ordinary sum; that is, for any u; v; w in V :

u þ v ¼ v þ u;
u þ ðv þ wÞ ¼ ðu þ vÞ þ w;
u þ 0 ¼ u;
u þ ðuÞ ¼ 0:

And the second group say that multiples of vectors behave like multiples of
numbers; that is, for any a;b in ℝ and u; v in V ,

aðbuÞ ¼ ðabÞu;
1u ¼ u;
aðu þ vÞ ¼ au þ av;
ða þ bÞu ¼ au þ bu:

It is clear from these axioms that ℝ itself is a real vector space, but a more
interesting example is V ¼ ℝ2 , with sums and multiples of the vectors ðx;yÞ
deﬁned, for each x;y;a 2 ℝ, by

ðx1 ;y1 Þ þ ðx2 ;y2 Þ ¼ ðx1 þ x2 ; y1 þ y2 Þ

aðx;yÞ ¼ ðax; ayÞ:

ℝ2 has considerable geometric content. One can deﬁne lines, parallel lines, and
a relative concept of length along a given line. For example, one can say that the
multiples tv of a non-zero vector v form a line through 0, and that 2v is twice as
far from 0 as v. However, there is no concept of distance between arbitrary
points. To obtain the natural concept of distance, Grassmann introduced the
inner product:

ðx1 ;y1 Þ ðx2 ;y2 Þ ¼ x1 x2 þ y1 y2 :

From this deﬁnition it follows that if v ¼ ðx;yÞ, then

v v ¼ x2 þ y2 ¼ jvj2 ;

where jvj is the distance of jvj from the origin 0 given by the Pythagorean
theorem. As Grassmann (1847) pointed out, his inner product is essentially
equivalent to the Pythagorean theorem. The concept of angle is also inherent in
the inner product, because

u v ¼ jujjvjcos θ;

where θ is the angle between the lines from 0 to u and v.

6.5 Vector Geometry

The previous section shows that the plane of Descartes (Section 4.2), in which
points are ordered pairs ðx;yÞ of reals x;y and distance is given by the Pythagorean
theorem, has the same ingredients as the vector space ℝ2 with Grassmann’s inner
product. The difference is that the algebra of Descartes, which involves arbi-
trary polynomials in x and y, goes much further than Euclid. Grassmann’s

algebra of the vector space ℝ2 , involving only sums and real multiples of
vectors, and the inner product, is at just the right level to capture Euclid’s
geometry. For this reason, the vector space ℝ2 with Grassmann’s inner product
is called the Euclidean plane.
Grassmann’s vector geometry also generalizes to any number of
dimensions with no extra effort. By working with n-tuples ðx1 ;x2 ; . . . ;xn Þ
of real numbers, one can do geometry in any number of dimensions without the
need for visualization, thus breaking the dimension barrier that held back the
Greeks.
In another direction, it is useful to generalize the deﬁnition of ‘distance’ by
generalizing the concept of inner product. A famous example is Minkowski
space deﬁned by Minkowski (1908) as a setting for Einstein’s special theory of
relativity. This is the space ℝ4 of 4-tuples ðt;x;y;zÞ with distance derived from
the inner product

ðt1 ;x1 ;y1 ;z1 Þ ðt2 ;x2 ;y2 ;z2 Þ ¼ t1 t2 þ x1 x2 þ y1 y2 þ z1 z2 :

Thus the Minkowski distance of ðt;x;y;zÞ from the origin has square equal
to t2 þ x2 þ y2 þ z2 , which is sometimes negative. Minkowski space is the
natural space for physics, where t stands for time and x;y;z are variables for the
three dimensions of space. But mathematically it is equally interesting to look at
the 3-dimensional space obtained by dropping the z coordinate.
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
In this space there is a ‘sphere of radius 1’, consisting of the points
v ¼ ðt;x;yÞ with jvj2 ¼ 1, that is

t2 þ x2 þ y2 ¼ 1; or t2 x2 y2 ¼ 1:

This is none other than the hyperboloid, shown in Figure 20. In terms of
Minkowski distance, the geometry on this hyperboloid is none other the non-
Euclidean geometry of Beltrami! In Figure 20 (based on one due to Konrad
Polthier of the Free University of Berlin) we have indicated how triangles in
conformal disc model (Figure 17) correspond to triangles on the hyperboloid
that are equal in the sense of Minkowski distance.
Minkowski space gives substance to the wild idea of Lambert from back in
1766 (mentioned in Section 4.5), that non-Euclidean geometry might hold on a
sphere of imaginary radius.
Euclidean and Minkowski spaces show that ℝ is a natural and convenient
foundation for geometry, both Euclidean and non-Euclidean. The next question
is: what is a foundation for ℝ? In Section 8 we will see two answers to this
question. But ﬁrst we need to take a closer look at ℝ itself, in Section 7, to
appreciate how subtle its foundation may be.

Figure 20 The hyperboloid model of non-Euclidean geometry.

6.6 Philosophical Issues

A key step in Beltrami’s modelling of non-Euclidean geometry was his decision
to generalize the concept of length. He was emboldened to do this by his reading
of Riemann (1854), a ground-breaking work in the foundations of geometry that
was first published in 1868. In a sweeping new approach to geometry (now
known as Riemannian geometry), Riemann generalized the arithmetized geo-
metry of Descartes from the plane to curved spaces of any dimension n. The
points of the space, instead of being represented by ordered pairs of numbers,
were represented by ordered n-tuples ðx1 ; x2 ; . . . ; xn Þ. And distance, instead of
being given by the ‘Pythagorean’ formula, was obtained by calculus from an
‘infinitesimal Pythagorean’ formula. The ‘infinitesimal Pythagorean’ property
means that the geometry of the space (as manifested by the angle sum of a
triangle, for example) approaches Euclidean geometry in small regions, but may
diverge from it in large regions. An example is the geometry of the sphere,
where small triangles have angle sum close to π, but large triangles have angle
sum much greater than π.
The sphere is an example of a space with constant positive curvature. Riemann
looked briefly at spaces of constant negative curvature, but it was Beltrami who
noticed that such spaces exhibit non-Euclidean geometry, and that their ‘lines’
(curves of shortest length) can be modelled simply by circular arcs, as in Figure 17.
Thus Riemannian geometry is a thoroughgoing arithmetization of geometry, point-
ing the way to an arithmetic basis for Euclidean, non-Euclidean, and all kinds of
curved geometries.
The revolution wrought by Riemann and Beltrami raised several issues about
the nature of geometry and its place in mathematics.

Intuition and logic. Models show that Euclidean and non-Euclidean geome-
tries are equally sound, and the real numbers provide a foundation for both (and
also for calculus and mathematical physics). It remains to ﬁnd a good founda-
tion for the real numbers; hopefully based on the arithmetic of natural numbers.
As we know, Dedekind found one way to do this (Section 5.3).

Meaning and existence. But the real numbers involve more than arithmetic;
namely, some assumption about inﬁnity. How much is it necessary, and legit-
imate, to assume?

Discrete and continuous. Bridging the gap between discrete and continuous is
essentially the problem of deﬁning real numbers in terms of natural numbers.
Hence the possibility of bridging the gap (and arithmetizing geometry) depends
on what it is legitimate to assume about inﬁnity.

7 Set Theory and Its Paradoxes

PREVIEW
Dedekind’s definition of real numbers opened a new era in mathematical
thought, in which infinite sets were viewed as mathematical objects. This was
unwelcome to many mathematicians, who took the ancient view that actual
infinity was unacceptable. Indeed, in some quarters, resistance to actual infinity
continues to this day.
Even more unwelcome was the discovery of Cantor (1874) that the real
numbers form an uncountable set – one that cannot be finessed as a merely
potential infinity rather than actual.
But uncountability was not the last straw. Cantor (1891) found a
simple generalization of his argument that shows there is no largest set.
Indeed, for any set S, the subsets of S are more numerous than members of S.
It follows that there is no ‘set of all sets’ and therefore not every property is
realized by a set. In particular, there is no set that realizes the property ‘X is a
set’. Even Dedekind was worried by this development.

7.1 Before Cantor

In Section 2.3 we mentioned that the Greeks were suspicious of infinity, and
explained how they avoided it as far as possible. Nevertheless, the Greeks
certainly used infinite processes, and very ingeniously at that. Their avoidance
in practice meant considering arbitrary finite parts of an infinite totality or
process – the ‘potential’ rather than the ‘actual’ infinite.

The actual inﬁnite was avoided because of its seemingly paradoxical prop-
erties, such as apparent violation of the principle that ‘the whole is greater than
the part’. This paradox resurfaced with the revival of Greek learning in
Medieval and Renaissance times. For example, Galileo pointed out the
correspondence

1 2 3 4 ...
↕ ↕ ↕ ↕
12 22 32 42

which seemingly shows the whole collection of positive integers to be no

greater than its part consisting of squares.
Until the late nineteenth century this kind of relationship – a one-to-one
correspondence between a part and the whole of some collection – was con-
sidered paradoxical. But eventually one-to-one correspondence came to be seen
as the right way to compare infinite sets. Indeed, Dedekind (1888) took the
defining property of an infinite set to be that its whole can be put in one-to-one
correspondence with a part, thus turning a paradox into a definition. Two sets
that can be put in one-to-one correspondence with one another are called
equinumerous or of the same cardinality.
Many sets are equinumerous with the set ℕ of positive integers. For example:

1 The set ℤ of all integers, equinumerous with ℕ via the correspondence

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...
↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕
0 1 1 2 2 3 3

2 The ℚþ of positive rationals, via the correspondence

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ...
↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕
1=1 2=1 1=2 3=1 1=3 4=1 3=2 2=3 1=4

where the bottom line lists the distinct fractions m=n in groups: ﬁrst those with
m þ n ¼ 2, then those with m þ n ¼ 3, those with m þ n ¼ 4, and so on.

3 The set ℚ of all rationals can then be shown equinumerous with ℕ by the
same trick used to list ℤ: list 0 ﬁrst, then alternately list the positive and
negative form of each positive rational.

These results show that ℤ, ℚþ , and ℚ can all be viewed as ‘potential’ infinities
like ℕ. An even stronger result along the same lines was found by Dedekind in
1874: the set of all algebraic numbers (solutions of polynomial equations with
integer coefficients) is equinumerous with ℕ. So it too can be viewed as a
‘potential’ infinity. With these results most of the ancient fears about actual
infinity could be dismissed – because every infinity seemed to be merely
‘potential’ – but there was a big surprise just around the corner.

7.2 Cantor’s Diagonal Argument

Cantor (1874) proved that the real numbers are not equinumerous with the
positive integers. That is, any pairing of positive integers with real numbers,

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 . . .,
↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕
x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7

fails to include all the real numbers. In fact, given any list x1 ;x2 ;x3 ;x4 ; . . . of real
numbers we can explicitly describe a real number x not on the list. The 1874
proof was not easy to follow – especially for a mathematical community
completely unprepared for it – but Cantor (1891) gave another proof which
obtains the ‘witness’ x with maximum clarity. This is the famous (or, to some,
notorious) diagonal argument.
There are many ways in which the real numbers x1 ;x2 ;x3 ;x4 ; . . . can be
given, but to be speciﬁc we will suppose they are given as inﬁnite decimals.
We will also ignore digits before the decimal point, so we can imagine the
numbers displayed as in Figure 21, showing just the digits after the decimal
point:

x1 1 1 1 1 ...
x2 0 2 0 1 ...
x3 7 7 7 7 ...
x4 0 0 0 0 ...
..
.
x 2 1 1 1 ...

Figure 21 The diagonal construction.

Figure 21 also shows the first few digits of x. We ensure that x 6¼ each xn
by being different in the n th decimal place (and not using the digits 0 and 9 in x,
because numbers with these digits can be the same even though their digits
are different – for example 0 4999 . . . ¼ 0 5000 . . .). Specifically, we define x
by

2 if nth digit of xn is 1
nth digit of x ¼
1 if nth digit of xn is not 1:

Thus x is different from all the numbers x1 ;x2 ;x3 ;x4 ; . . ., hence the given list does
not include all real numbers. Because of this, we say that the set of all real
numbers is uncountable – a countable set being one whose members can be
paired with the positive integers.
Since only countable sets can be considered ‘potentially’ infinite, the set ℝ of
real numbers is unavoidably an actual infinity.
Cantor’s argument is called ‘diagonal’ because it involves just the digits on
the diagonal of the table, shown in bold in the figure. Thus we need only inspect
a finite amount of each decimal expansion – namely, the first n digits of xn – to
calculate the n th digit of x. I mention this to dispel the common misconception
that the diagonal argument merely proves the existence of a number x not on the
given list x1 ;x2 ;x3 ;x4 ; . . . . In fact it shows that x is just as constructible as the
numbers x1 ;x2 ;x3 ;x4 ; . . . themselves.

7.3 Higher Inﬁnities

The essence of the diagonal argument is to say: given a real number xn paired
with each natural number n, we can deﬁne a real number x 6¼ each xn by the rule

2 if nth digit of xn is 1
nth digit of x ¼
1 if nth digit of xn is not 1;

because this makes x 6¼ xn in the n th decimal place. A similar argument shows

that there can be no list S1 ;S2 ;S3 ;S4 ; . . . of all subsets of ℕ. Because for any such
list we can deﬁne a set S 6¼ each Sn by the rule

n2 S ⇔ n2
= Sn ;

since this rule makes S different from Sn with respect to the number n.
In his 1891 paper Cantor took this train of thought to the end of the line,
showing that every set X has more subsets than members. To see why, suppose
that each member x of X is paired with a subset Sx of S. But then we can deﬁne a
subset S of X different from each Sx with respect to the member x. Namely, let

x2 S ⇔ x2
= Sx :

Thus a collection of subsets Sx paired with members x of X does not include all
subsets of X .
What is slightly alarming about this result is that it shows that there is no set
of all sets. If there were such a set, X say, then the collection of its subsets
would be a set bigger than the set of all sets, which is clearly contradictory.
Cantor soon noticed this consequence of the diagonal argument, but he
remained calm. (Dedekind, however, was surprised by this development,
and he delayed publication of a second edition of his book Dedekind [1888]
as a result.) History would show that it is natural for the collection of all sets
not to be a set, much as it is natural for the collection of all positive integers not
to be a positive integer. However, at the time there was alarm because of a
previous belief that every property should be realized by a set. After Cantor’s
discovery, it was clear that there are exceptions to this belief, such as the
property of being a set.

7.4 Aftermath of the Diagonal Argument

The diagonal argument was a pivotal discovery in the foundations of mathe-
matics. In one direction it led, seemingly inexorably, to higher realms of
infinity – and towards new kinds of paradox. In another direction it led to
the discovery of limitations in formal mathematics: incompleteness and algo-
rithmic unsolvability, as we will see in the next two sections. And it also
provoked reaction from a new breed of sceptics, whose scepticism was
directed not just at infinity but at logic itself.
Cantor’s discovery that there is no largest set, and that not every property is
realized by a set, led to the development of set theory, a systematic study of
infinite sets in general and ℝ in particular. The uncountability of ℝ was merely
the first of many confounding discoveries about ℝ, showing that the number line
we thought we knew is more complicated than anyone imagined. In fact, to
answer many questions about ℝ we have to make assumptions about the whole
universe of sets.
On the other hand, the simple and computational nature of the diagonal
argument makes it applicable to the most down-to-earth ‘potential’ kinds of
infinity. For example, it shows that there is no computable list of all computable
numbers. Because if x1 ;x2 ;x3 ; . . . is a computable list of computable numbers
then the diagonal number x is also computable – and it is not on the list. This
result has profound implications for what can be computed, in all areas of
mathematics.

Not surprisingly, the diagonal argument and its implications were not wel-
come to all mathematicians. Those already suspicious of infinity, such as
Cantor’s Berlin colleague Kronecker, became even more vehement in their
opposition to sets such as ℝ. Weierstrass was more sympathetic, but he per-
suaded Cantor to tone down the uncountability aspect of the proof and to
emphasize instead a positive outcome: a new and elementary proof of the
existence of non-algebraic numbers – the so-called transcendental numbers.
(This follows immediately from the uncountability of ℝ and Dedekind’s result
that the set of algebraic numbers is countable.)
In the years that followed, Cantor’s ideas gradually gained the support of
the majority, thanks to the support of eminent mathematicians such as
Hilbert. Some opposition remained, but it became more nuanced as it
was gradually understood how much mathematics has to be sacrificed if
various kinds of infinity are rejected. Among the extreme rejectionists, the
most prominent are the constructivists, who accept existence proofs
only when they provide a construction of the object claimed to exist. This
attitude has had a positive influence even on mathematicians who do not
share it. For example, we now know how to construct many objects, such as
solutions of polynomial equations, first shown to exist by non-constructive
arguments.

7.5 Philosophical Issues

It may be worth mentioning that Cantor’s first proof of the uncountability of ℝ
was also a diagonal argument, but in a less transparent form. It had the same
essence: constructing a real number x step by step and making x different from
the real number xn at step n. However, the construction was specific to real
numbers, so the spectacular generalization to arbitrary sets found by Cantor
(1891) was new. There is another uncountability proof, specific to ℝ, which is
more revealing in my opinion. It goes like this.
Given real numbers x1 ;x2 ;x3 ; . . ., we cover each xn by an interval of length
2n . Then the total length of the number line covered is at most

1 1 1
þ þ þ . . . ¼ 1;
2 4 8
which is surely not the whole line. So the points x1 ;x2 ;x3 ; . . . cannot include all
real numbers. This proof can be refined to give a specific number x not covered.
We choose the first (binary) digit of x to avoid the first interval, then the second
digit to avoid the second interval, and so on – at which stage it becomes clear
that this construction is another diagonal argument.

There is in fact another route to uncountability, through Cantor’s theory of

ordinal numbers. Interesting though this is, it raises another set of issues that we
do not have space to discuss here. The existence of uncountable sets raises
enough issues on its own.

Intuition and logic. How much understanding of inﬁnity is humanly possible?

Dedekind (1888, §66) made an audacious attempt to prove that inﬁnite sets exist
(following a similar attempt by Bolzano 1851, §13). It is based on the fact that
only an inﬁnite set can be equinumerous with a proper subset of itself:

Theorem. There exist inﬁnite systems.

Proof. My own realm of thoughts, i.e. the totality S of all things which can be
objects of my thought, is inﬁnite. For if s signiﬁes an element of S, then is the
thought s0 , that s can be an object of my thought, itself an element of S. If we
regard this as a transform ðsÞ of the elements s then has the transformation
0 0
of S, thus determined, the property that the transform S is part of S; and S is
certainly a proper part of S, because there are elements in S … which are not
0
contained in S .

Spoilsports will no doubt object that in his lifetime Dedekind had only a
ﬁnite number of thoughts, so there must be something wrong with this
‘proof’. But who knows what the realm of Dedekind’s thoughts really is?
Dedekind’s argument had some eminent supporters, such as Russell (1903,
357).
Bolzano and Dedekind considered only countable sets, but we might also
shoot for uncountable sets. Is our apparent intuition of continuity an intuition of
uncountability and/or actual inﬁnity?

Meaning and existence. Before Cantor, the question of infinity was simple:
do we accept actual infinity or not? After Cantor, the question became
more complex: how much infinity do we accept? When infinity is found to
have infinitely many possible levels, many different levels of acceptance are
possible. Some mathematicians accepted only countably infinite sets
(the potential infinite), others accepted ℝ but not all subsets of ℝ, and so on.
The French mathematicians Borel, Baire, Lebesgue, and Hadamard had a lively
debate about this in 1905, which may be read in Ewald (1996, II:1077–86). In
response to Borel’s view that certain procedures, such as making uncountably
many choices, were ‘outside mathematics’, Hadamard retorted:

From the invention of the inﬁnitesimal calculus to the present, it seems to me,
the essential progress in mathematics has resulted from successively annex-
ing notions which, for the Greeks or the Renaissance geometers or the
predecessors of Riemann, were ‘outside mathematics’ because it was impos-
sible to describe them. (see Ewald 1996, 1084)
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 51

Discrete and continuous. The uncountability of ℝ conclusively shows

that mathematics involving ℝ – such as analysis – touches on set theory. At
the very least, the project of arithmetizing geometry and analysis must go some
distance beyond pure arithmetic: it must include some assumptions about
inﬁnite sets.
In the next section we will look at the standard axiom system of arithmetic,
and catch a glimpse of the axioms about sets that lie beyond.

8 Formal Systems
PREVIEW
The sudden appearance of set theory and its paradoxes was not the only
philosophically signiﬁcant development in late nineteenth-century mathe-
matics. Another was the emergence of formal logic and, more generally, formal
systems for mathematics. Beginning with appearance of Boole’s Mathematical
Analysis of Logic in 1847, logic and mathematics were translated into symbo-
lism in which deductions were essentially calculations.
A century ago, systems ready for formalization were known for arithmetic
(Peano 1889), geometry (Hilbert 1899), and set theory (Zermelo 1908). There
was also a formal system for logic, due to Frege (1879).
Formal systems revived an old dream of Leibniz: a calculus ratiocinator by
which the truth of any proposition could be decided by calculation. It is true that
P
the theorems of a formal system are obtainable by calculation, so if τ is a
P
theorem of we will eventually observe this fact by systematically generating
theorems. However, it is not clear whether
P
1 all truths expressible in are theorems, (Completeness)
2 some rule decides, for each τ, whether τ is a theorem, (Decidability)
P P
3 if proves τ then does not prove the negation of τ. (Consistency)

Nevertheless, these are all questions about the outcomes of finite computations,
like questions of number theory. So one might hope to settle them by elementary
means (which Hilbert called ‘finitary’). In particular, by a programme for
settling the consistency question for formal set theory, Hilbert hoped to remove
all doubt about the use of infinity in mathematics.

8.1 Hilbert
In the 1890s Hilbert reinvigorated Euclid’s geometry in a thorough study of
geometric axioms and their relation to algebra and the real numbers.
Building on work of some of his predecessors, such as von Staudt and
Pasch, he
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52 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

1 ﬁlled the gaps in Euclid’s system, by explicitly stating axioms that Euclid had
used unconsciously,
2 grouped the axioms into conceptually different types: incidence, order, con-
gruence, circle intersection,
3 derived the algebraic properties of sum and product from incidence axioms,
and their order properties from the order axioms,
4 added two axioms not needed for geometry but needed to derive the proper-
ties of the real number line: the Archimedean axiom (stating that there are no
inﬁnitesimals), and a completeness axiom (stating that there are no gaps, in
the sense of Dedekind).

It is evident from the inclusion of Archimedean and completeness axioms

that Hilbert was interested in the real numbers as much as he was interested
in geometry. In fact, in his 1899 book Grundlagen der Geometrie
(Foundations of geometry) he also included an ingenious new construction
of ℝ from the axioms of non-Euclidean geometry (obtained by replacing the
parallel axiom).
The derivation of ℝ from geometric axioms has not been used much in
mathematics, but it has made a curious contribution to philosophy. Hartry
Field (1980), in his Science without Numbers, adapted Hilbert’s result to derive
the structure of the real numbers from axioms about physical space. He used this
derivation to claim that ℝ is dispensable in science, and hence that no one need
assume its existence. But, to most mathematicians, assuming that the structure
of ℝ exists (in physical space or in any abstract realm) is the same as assuming
the existence of ℝ itself. And assuming that physical space is archimedean,
complete, and Euclidean – merely to avoid assuming the existence of ℝ – seems
to defy physics as much as it deﬁes mathematics.

8.2 The Systems of Peano and Zermelo

The more usual way to arrive at ℝ in mathematics is through axioms for
the natural numbers and sets. Axioms for the natural numbers were given by
Dedekind (1888) and Peano (1889), in a system now called Peano arithmetic, or
PA. Peano acknowledged an idea of Grassmann (1861) that the crucial concept
of arithmetic is induction. ‘Induction’ here is not the rough idea of drawing a
general conclusion from particular cases, but an ironclad guarantee that the
general conclusion is correct. This kind of induction is often called complete
induction because, for natural numbers, it covers all cases.
What makes it possible to prove a general claim σðnÞ about an arbitrary
natural number n is that n can be reached from 0 by repeatedly adding 1.
Therefore, if we can prove that σð0Þ holds, and that σðm þ 1Þ holds whenever
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 53

σðmÞ holds, then we can be sure that σðnÞ holds for each natural number n.
Peano built this idea into his axiom system in two ways.

• After including names 0 and S for the initial number and the successor
function SðmÞ ¼ m þ 1, with appropriate properties, he gave inductive deﬁ-
nitions of sum and product:
l þ 0 ¼ l; l þ SðmÞ ¼ Sðl þ mÞ;
l 0 ¼ 0; l SðmÞ ¼ l m þ l:

It follows from these definitions that the functions þ and are defined for all
natural numbers. For example, the first equation in the definition of þ defines
l þ m for m ¼ 0; the second defines l þ SðmÞ once l þ m is defined, and
hence defines l þ n for all natural numbers n, by complete induction.
Likewise, the second pair of equations defines l n for all n, given that þ is
already defined.

• The deﬁnitions of þ and enable all particular facts about sum and product
for the numerals 0;Sð0Þ;SSð0Þ; . . . to be derived, by substituting in the deﬁn-
ing equations. But to prove general facts, such as l þ m ¼ m þ l, Peano
provides the induction axiom for each property σ: If σð0Þ and if
σðmÞ ) σðSðmÞÞ for all m, then σðnÞ holds for each n.

(An equivalent induction axiom is that every set of natural numbers has a least
member, or that a descending sequence of natural numbers is finite. In the latter
form induction goes back to Euclid.)
Zermelo gave axioms for set theory in 1908. We omit the details, but they are
similar to the Dedekind or Peano axioms in spirit, as Zermelo acknowledged.
They assert the existence of a starting set ∅ (the empty set, which can be
viewed as 0), operations for building further sets (which, among other things,
allow successors of 0 to be built), and an axiom of infinity stating the existence
of a set including 0 and all its successors. There is also an axiom of foundation
that is similar to induction. Indeed, if the axiom of infinity is omitted, Zermelo’s
set theory has essentially the same content as the Peano axioms. So set theory in
a sense is ‘number theory þ infinity’.
Set theory is an extremely powerful system, capable of covering virtually all of
mainstream mathematics. This is because it has set construction principles – such
as forming the set PðX Þ of all subsets of a set X – that cause explosive growth
once an infinite set X is present. Beginning with Hilbert in the 1930s, there has
been interest in systems with milder set construction principles, tailored to
analysis. In these systems it turns out that we can measure the ‘strength’ of
various theorems of analysis by the set construction principles needed to prove
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54 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

them. (It happens surprisingly often that we can find the ‘right set construction
axioms’ to prove theorems of analysis, rather like finding the parallel axiom to be
the ‘right axiom’ to prove many theorems of geometry. This phenomenon is
studied in the new field of reverse mathematics mentioned in Section 6.3.)

8.3 Frege’s System for Logic

So far we have been vague about how axioms may be ‘formalized’ so as to
realize Leibniz’s dream of ﬁnding truth by calculation. The missing ingredient
is formal logic. The ﬁrst steps were taken by Boole (1847), in what later became
known as Boolean algebra or propositional logic. Boole noticed that the con-
nectives ‘or’ and ‘and’ act on propositions rather like sum and product. They
satisfy certain basic identities, such as a þ b ¼ b þ a and ab ¼ ba from which
general identities between compound propositions may be proved by algebra.
But propositional logic is not expressive enough for mathematics, where the
internal structure of a proposition is important. Typically, a mathematical
proposition contains:

Variables ranging over some domain of individuals, such as numbers.

Predicate symbols denoting properties or relations on the domain.
Logic symbols which include not only connectives, such as ‘and’, ‘or’, and
‘not’, but also the quantiﬁers ‘for all x’ and ‘there exists an x’, applied to any
variable x.

When these linguistic elements are included we have the language of predicate
logic. For predicate logic it is not at all clear how to prove the valid propositions –
that is, those true for all domains and all interpretations of the predicate symbols –
but, amazingly, it is possible. Frege in 1879 gave a set of axioms and rules of
inference capable of generating them.
We will not list all of Frege’s axioms and rules here. Examples of his axioms,
written in terms of the connectives ) (if … then)1 and : (not) and the
quantiﬁer 8x (for all x), are

• a ) ðb ) aÞ,
• a ) ð::aÞ,
• 8xPðxÞ ) PðcÞ, where c is a letter not in PðxÞ.

Examples of his rules of inference are

• modus ponens: from B and B ) A infer A
• 8 introduction: from AðxÞ infer 8xAðxÞ.

1
Equivalent to the horseshoe symbol preferred by philosophers.
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 55

Frege apparently believed that his axioms and rules of inference suffice to prove
any valid proposition. Gödel (1930) proved that Frege was correct. This com-
pleteness theorem for predicate logic was the first of several astonishing con-
tributions of Gödel to mathematical logic (and to the philosophy of mathematics).
Gödel’s proof of the completeness theorem incidentally proved two other
important properties of predicate logic.
P
Modelling consistent sentences. If is a set of propositions whose logical
P
consequences include no contradiction then there is a model of . That is,
there is a domain D of individuals, and interpretations of the predicate
P P
symbols of on D, under which each proposition in is true.
P0 P P
Compactness. If each finite subset of has a model, then so has . (This
P0
follows from modelling, because if each finite subset has a model, then no
P0 P
contradiction follows from . But then no contradiction follows from ,
P0 P
since any proof is finite and hence involves only a finite subset of .)

8.4 Completeness and Incompleteness

Predicate logic completeness means that all mathematical theorems are prova-
ble in the following relative sense. If τ follows from axioms α1 ; . . . ;αk , then the
implication ðα1 and . . . and αk Þ ) τ is valid and hence provable in predicate
logic. (This calls to mind the opening words of Russell [1903]: pure mathe-
matics is the class if all propositions of the form ‘p implies q’.)
However, there may be some area of mathematics that cannot be completely
axiomatized, in the sense that no set of axioms we can write down will logically
imply all the truths of that area. This actually happens, as we will see in the next
section.

8.5 Philosophical Issues

When formal systems were ﬁrst introduced, many of the questions about them
concerned the meaning of the formulas and the methods used to derive theo-
rems, such as induction.

Intuition and logic. Poincaré in 1894 made a forceful contrast between induc-
tion in science and in mathematics:

Induction applied to the physical sciences is always uncertain, because it rests

on the belief in a general order of the universe, and order outside us.
Mathematical induction … on the contrary, imposes itself necessarily
because it is only the afﬁrmation of a property of the mind itself. (see
Ewald 1996, II:980)

By describing induction as a property of the mind, he is claiming that induction

belongs to intuition, rather than logic. Be that as it may, induction can certainly
be expressed as a property of numbers.
Given the reduction of mathematics to arithmetic plus some set theory, it
remains to find suitable axioms for arithmetic and sets. For arithmetic, induction
seems both intuitive and crucial – but is it sufficient? For sets, it is not obvious
which axioms are intuitive or sufficient. How sure are we that the accepted
axioms are consistent?

Meaning and existence. Is the existence of inﬁnite sets provable? Bolzano

(1851) and Dedekind (1888) thought so, as we saw in Section 7.5, but Zermelo
took it as an axiom. On the other hand, a workable theory of a finite mathema-
tical universe does not seem to exist either. If we omit Zermelo’s axiom of
infinity from his set theory (or add its negation) we obtain a theory of finite sets,
but still there are infinitely many finite sets. So, not surprisingly, we cannot find
any finite model of the theory of finite sets.
Another question about existence was raised by Hilbert in 1900. I quote from
the English translation in Hilbert (1902, 448):

If contradictory attributes be assigned to a concept, I say, that mathematically

the concept does not exist. So, for example, a real number whose square is 1
does not exist mathematically. But if it can be proved that the attributes
assigned to the concept can never lead to a contradiction by the application
of a ﬁnite number of logical processes, I say that the mathematical existence
of the concept (for example, of a number or a function which satisﬁes certain
conditions) is thereby proved.

A rather satisfying justiﬁcation of Hilbert’s claim is given by the modelling of

consistent sentences that follows from Gödel’s proof of the completeness
theorem for predicate logic. If the ‘attributes assigned to the concept’ can be
expressed in predicate logic (which is normally the case in mathematics) then
the concept has a model, which can serve to establish its existence.

Discrete and continuous. The downside of the model of consistent sentences

obtained from Gödel’s completeness proof is that it is not necessarily the intended
model. In particular, if the set of sentences is countable – which for all practical
purposes it must be – then the model is also countable. In particular any consistent
set of sentences about the continuum has a countable model, which is certainly
not intended! This result, due to Skolem (1922) and known as the Skolem
paradox, is not actually contradictory. It means only that there is no function in
the model that pairs the members of its ‘continuum’ with natural numbers. But it
certainly shows how hard it is to completely describe the continuum.

Some mathematicians objected to formalization, not only because they did

not believe in some of the objects being formalized, but also on the grounds
that formalization excludes intuition, which they considered to be a vital
ingredient in mathematics. The latter objection could have been quashed, in
principle, if a complete formal system for mathematics were found – but it
won’t be, as we will see in the next section. In any case the objection was
beside the point.
Even the strongest advocates of formalization, such as Hilbert, valued the
role of intuition in mathematics. Their reason for formalization was otherwise:
to produce proofs that everyone agrees are proofs. Everyone will agree that a
given theorem follows from given axioms by given rules, because this is a
statement about a finite computation that anyone can verify. The interpretation
of the strings of symbols in the proof is beside the point. The point of
formalization is, rather, to make the question of consistency a question
about computation; namely, whether a contradictory string such as 0 ¼ 1
follows from the axioms by the given rules. Once this question is answered
affirmatively for a formal system F then even constructivists will have to admit
that F is harmless, even if they do not consider all its theorems to be
meaningful.
This was the Hilbert programme, with which he hoped to prove that reason-
ing about infinity is harmless. The programme did not turn out as Hilbert hoped,
as we will see in the next section, but it did lead to remarkable developments in
the philosophy of mathematics.

9 Unsolvability and Incompleteness

PREVIEW
The formal systems discussed in the previous section are a partial realization of
Leibniz’s dream of a calculus ratiocinator – a formal system for establishing
truth – but only partial. In this section we look at the other side of the story: the
limitations of formal systems. The limitations stem from a stunning proposition
known as Church’s thesis: there is a complete and mathematically precise
definition of computation (and, with it, precise definitions of algorithm, solvable
problem, and unsolvable problem).
The possibility of an all-embracing definition of computation was first
suspected by Post in the 1920s, and most convincingly argued by Turing
(1936). By its nature, Church’s thesis can in principle be falsified, but no
falsification has ever come to light. So Church’s thesis is now considered to
be as well confirmed as any law of nature.

At any rate, we can build a theory of computation on Church’s thesis, and this
theory leads to the following remarkable results:

1 There are algorithmically unsolvable problems in mathematics.

2 Any sufﬁciently strong formal system for arithmetic is incomplete or
inconsistent.
3 The consistency of a sufﬁciently strong formal system for arithmetic is not
provable within the system.

These results, as we will show in outline below, all follow from simple varia-
tions on Cantor’s diagonal argument.

9.1 Computability
In the seventeenth century, when Leibniz dreamed of deciding truth by compu-
tation, the concept of computation had a rather limited meaning. Leibniz
himself had designed a computing machine capable of doing arithmetic on
numbers, and no doubt he would have accepted that algebra was computation
too. By 1850 Boole had got as far as doing propositional logic by algebraic
computation. But a general definition of computation had to wait for the
development of formal systems for mathematics, around 1900. Only then did
it become clear how broad the definition of computation needed to be in order to
make Leibniz’s dream come true.
The most influential formal system in the early twentieth century was the
Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell (1910). The Principia
claimed to show how all theorems of mathematics could be generated from
particular axioms by certain rules. The rules were such that, in principle, they
were mechanical and hence could be applied without thought to strings of
symbols – eliminating all possibility of human error or bias. In the early
1920s the rules were analysed and simplified by Post, until they were reduced
to the form
0
gW → Wg ;
0 0
for a finite number of pairs of symbol strings ðg;g Þ. The rule gW →Wg says
0
that, in any string beginning with g, the g may be removed from the left and g
then attached on the right. Post called such a system of rules a normal system.
Post thought at first that the simplicity of normal systems would enable him to
decide whether a given string of symbols was a theorem of Principia or not. But
then he found himself unable to predict the behaviour of very simple normal
systems, and came to the realization that the situation was the opposite of what
he had hoped: any computation can be simulated by a normal system, and there

is no general rule for deciding whether a given normal system produces a given
string.
Post had glimpsed the future of mathematical logic as it was to unfold over
the next fifteen years (for his account, see Post 1941). However, he was held
back by an unprecedented difficulty: how can one be sure that the concept of
normal system (or any other definition) completely captures the concept of
computation? He saw that this claim (later known as Church’s thesis or the
Church–Turing thesis) is something like a law of nature – one in need of
continual verification, and at risk of possible falsification.

9.2 Unsolvability
While Post’s work remained unpublished and unknown, independent attempts
to deﬁne the notion of computation were made by Church (1936) and Turing
(1936). Turing’s approach (now known as the Turing machine concept) was
remarkably convincing, being basically an idealization of a human ‘computer’
working with pencil and paper:

• Instead of paper, a Turing machine has an infinite tape divided into squares.
Each square can hold one from a finite alphabet of symbols, including the
blank.
• Instead of the human with a pencil, a Turing machine has a read/write head
that can assume one of a finite number of internal states (like mental states).
The head scans one square at a time and, depending on the internal state qi and
scanned symbol Sj , replaces Sj by a symbol Sk , moves one square to the left or
right, and enters a state ql .

Each Turing machine is therefore described by ﬁnitely many quintuples, of

the form either qi Sj Sk Rql or qi Sj Sk Lql. A computation of the machine is deter-
mined by an input, consisting of a finite sequence of marked tape squares, the
square initially scanned, and the initial state.
With a little practice it is easy to realize pencil-and-paper computations by
Turing machine computations. The secret is to imagine how the computation
could be done if one is allowed to view only one symbol at a time. The
most ambitious computation one needs to think about is that of a universal
Turing machine: a machine U that can take the description of an arbitrary
Turing machine T, and arbitrary input I, and simulate the computation of T on
I.
The first difficulty to overcome is that U, like any other Turing machine, has
only a finite alphabet of symbols and finitely many internal states. If U is even to
read the description of T that description must be written in a fixed finite

Self-examination problem. Given a Turing machine T decide whether T, with

its own description des ðTÞ as input, ever halts on a blank square.

We are using the term ‘problem’ here to mean an inﬁnite set of questions, in this
case the following, for each Turing machine T:

QT : Does T, on input des ðTÞ, ever halt on a blank square?

We are going to show that no Turing machine S can correctly answer all the
questions QT . It is fair to assume that S receives question QT in the form des ðTÞ,
because QT can be reconstructed from des ðTÞ. It is also fair to assume that S
answers ‘no’ by halting on a blank square, and ‘yes’ by halting on a non-blank
square.
But then S cannot give the correct answer to question QS . If S, given input QS ,
halts on a blank square, then the answer to QS is ‘yes’, so S should not halt on a
blank square. And if S does not halt on a blank square then the answer to
question QS is ‘no’, and S must halt on a blank square.
This contradiction shows that the self-examination problem cannot be solved
by Turing machine. And therefore, if the Church–Turing thesis is correct, this
problem cannot be solved by any computation whatever. As we say, the problem
is algorithmically unsolvable or, simply, unsolvable.
Since the self-examination problem is rather obviously self-defeating, one
might hope that unsolvability is an aberration, not something that happens
naturally. This is not so, because Turing machines can be ‘simulated’ by various
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 61

natural systems in mathematics and logic. In fact Church and Turing both
noticed immediately that predicate logic can ‘simulate’ Turing machines, with
the result the problem of deciding validity in predicate logic – the so-called
Entscheidungsproblem – is unsolvable.

9.3 Incompleteness
The notion of computability, which by some miracle seems to be complete and
absolute, stands in contrast to the notion of provability, which turns out to be
incomplete and relative. The link between the two is non-computability,
which follows from computability by the diagonal argument. The most con-
venient form of the diagonal argument is the one used by Cantor (1891) to
prove that any set has more subsets than elements. Following Post, we apply
this argument to sets associated with Turing machines, called computably
enumerable sets.
A set of natural numbers is called computably enumerable if there is a Turing
machine that lists its elements. The manner of making the list is not important,
as long as any Turing machine has a computably enumerable set associated with
it (possibly the empty set), and we can observe when a given machine T lists a
given number n. We will appeal to the Church–Turing thesis to claim that any
set that is intuitively listable is listable by Turing machine. ℕ is computably
enumerable, and so are many of its subsets, such as the set of prime numbers.
Moreover, we can computably enumerate all the Turing machine descriptions,
by listing them in lexicographical order. We let Wn be the computably enumer-
able set listed by the n th Turing machine.
It follows by the diagonal argument that the set

D ¼ fn : n 2
= Wn g

is not computably enumerable, because it differs from each Wn with respect to

the element n. (Interestingly, its complement ℕ D ¼ fn : n 2 Wn g is compu-
tably enumerable. We can list the n that appear in ℕ D by allowing the first k
Turing machines to run for k steps, for k ¼ 1; 2; 3; . . ., and putting n on the list if
ever it is listed by the n th machine.)
Now a formal system F , by the broadest possible definition, has a compu-
tably enumerable set of theorems, so we can computably enumerate the theo-
rems of F that have the form n 2 = D. Since D is not computably enumerable,
these theorems (if correct) do not include all true statements of the form n 2 = D.
This fact points to some failure of the system F , but we have to tease out the
significance of the proviso ‘if correct’. This leads to a sequence of increasingly
strong incompleteness theorems.

1 Suppose that F is consistent and that the set of n for which F

proves ‘n 2= Wn ’ is the computably enumerable set Wm . We also assume
that F is strong enough to simulate Turing machines, and hence to prove
n 2 Wn whenever this is true. Now what can we say about the sentence
‘m 2 = Wm ’?

If F proves ‘m 2 = Wm ’, then m 2 Wm , by deﬁnition of Wm . But we have

assumed that F can prove all such true statements, so F also proves ‘ m 2 Wm ’,
contradicting consistency. Thus F does not prove ‘m 2 = Wm ’, so m 2 = Wm , by
the definition of Wm again. This makes ‘m 2 = Wm ’ a specific true sentence that
F fails to prove.
Notice that the sentence ‘m 2= Wm ’ essentially says ‘I am not provable’,
because m 2 = Wm means ‘m 2 = Wm ’ is not provable, by definition of Wm .

2 By translating the workings of Turing machines into arithmetic – which is

possible though far from obvious – we can show that Peano Arithmetic PA
(see Section 8.2) is ‘strong enough’ in the above sense. Thus the language of
PA has a sentence that is equivalent to m 2 = Wm , and hence unprovable in
PA, if PA is consistent. In other words, if PA is consistent, then the sentence
‘m 2 = Wm ’ is not provable in PA. Or, equivalently, if PA is consistent, then
m 2 = Wm .
3 Similar ‘arithmetization’ of proofs in PA lets us express consistency of PA by
a sentence in the language of PA, Con(PA), and to deduce from it that
m 2 = Wm . So ‘Con(PA) ) m 2 = Wm ’ is a theorem of PA.

It follows that Con(PA) cannot be proved in PA, otherwise modus

ponens would give a proof of ‘ m 2 = Wm ’, and we know that ‘ m 2 = Wm ’
has no proof in PA. Thus PA, if consistent, cannot prove its own consistency
(and neither can any consistent system that includes PA, because a similar
argument will apply).
This is a brilliant train of thought – one of the most stunning in mathe-
matics. Item 1 resembles the results found by Post in the 1920s. Items 2 and 3
are essentially the first and second incompleteness theorems of Gödel
(1931), though Gödel found the first theorem differently, by directly con-
structing a sentence that says ‘I am not provable’. Interestingly, Gödel first
proved incompleteness for the higher-level system of Principia
Mathematica because he did not realize that computation or proof could be
arithmetized. He was prompted to arithmetize by von Neumann, who also
deserves some credit for the second incompleteness theorem. Von Neumann
pointed out unprovability of consistency in a letter to Gödel before Gödel
announced the result himself.

9.4 The Incompleteness of Set Theory

The diagonal argument is an easy and powerful way to demonstrate the incom-
pleteness of common axiom systems for mathematics such as Peano arithmetic.
But it has so far failed to show the unprovability (in PA or any stronger system)
of any well known unproved sentences, such as the Goldbach conjecture, twin
prime conjecture, or Riemann hypothesis. In fact, all of the unprovable sen-
tences found so far are ones devised by logicians.
The situation is different in set theory, where several propositions open since
Cantor’s time were subsequently shown to be unprovable from the standard set
theory axioms. Two of the most interesting are the axiom of choice and the
continuum hypothesis.
The axiom of choice states that any set X of non-empty sets x has a choice
function: a function f such that f ðxÞ 2 x for each x 2 X . This axiom is used
implicitly (and in the early days it was often used unconsciously) whenever a set
is defined by means of an infinite sequence of choices. For example, to prove
that an infinite set X contains an infinite sequence of elements x1 ;x2 ;x3 ; . . . one
wants to say: choose x1 from X , then x2 from X fx1 g, then x3 from
X fx1 ;x2 g, and so on. But even this simple definition cannot be justified by
the standard axioms of set theory. Cohen (1963a,b) showed this by constructing
a model of the standard axioms in which there is an infinite set (of real numbers)
containing no infinite sequence.
The continuum hypothesis arose from Cantor’s discovery that ℝ is a set larger
than ℕ. In its naive form, the hypothesis states that ℝ is the next largest set after
ℕ. (Cantor also gave a more sophisticated form, involving ordinal numbers, that
I do not have space to explain here.) Cohen (1963a,b) showed that the con-
tinuum hypothesis is not provable from the standard axioms, by constructing a
model of these axioms in which the hypothesis is false. It should also be
mentioned that the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis cannot be
disproved from the standard axioms. This was shown by Gödel (1938) when he
constructed a model in which both statements hold.
Thus two of the most natural questions about infinite sets cannot be settled by
the natural axioms. The situation is a little like the situation of the parallel axiom
relative to the other axioms of Euclid (or Hilbert). We are free to add either
axiom or its negation and no contradiction will arise, assuming that the other
axioms are consistent. The difference is that, as far as we know, for set theory
there are no obviously natural models for the alternatives – no ‘Cantorian’ and
‘non-Cantorian’ set theories.2

2
Perhaps it would be better to say that the only known models for ‘Cantorian’ and ‘non-Cantorian’
set theories are those constructed with the purpose of modelling these theories. This contrasts with
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64 A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

9.5 Philosophical Issues

Taking the developments from the 1930s to the 1960s into account, we can see
how far the philosophy of mathematics has evolved since ancient Greece:

1 The concept of computability, unrecognized by the Greeks, has been pre-

cisely defined and now rules large areas of mathematics. It sets the limits for
the concept of proof, and adjudicates whether many problems are solvable or
not.
2 The concept of proof in logic has been described completely (in the case of
predicate logic, the one most relevant to mathematics): there is a computation
that generates all logically valid formulas. However, there is no algorithm
that decides, given an arbitrary formula, whether that formula is provable
(hence valid) or not.
3 The concept of proof in mathematics is incomplete, and hence falls short of
absolute mathematical truth; in fact, for any consistent system F containing a
certain amount of arithmetic there are true statements of F not provable by
F . On the bright side, it follows from the completeness of logic that we can
find all consequences of a given set of axioms.
4 A claim of Hilbert, that mathematical existence is the same as consistency,
has been found tenable, since Gödel’s proof of the completeness of predicate
logic gives a model for any consistent set of axioms (as mentioned in Section
8.3). However, a computable set of axioms need not have a computable
model, so this kind of existence is not acceptable to constructivists.
5 The consistency of mathematics has to be a matter of intuition; in the sense
that any reasonably strong (and consistent) system contains no proof of its
own consistency. The Hilbert program for proving consistency seems
damaged beyond repair by this result.
6 The meaning and existence of infinity has become a more complicated
question. The continuum, which most mathematicians accept, can be grasped
only as an actual infinity, because it is uncountable. But there are infinitely
many actual infinities. It is unclear where to draw the line between acceptable
and unacceptable in the actual infinities.
7 Despite its difficulties, the continuum has become the basis for analysis,
hence most of geometry, and most of mathematical physics. These fields of
mathematics have been arithmetized; that is, based on axioms for the natural
numbers plus certain axioms for infinite sets.

the situation in geometry, where non-Euclidean geometry was found to hold in certain structures
that had been studied before there was a suitable geometric language to describe them. We
mentioned this in section 6.3.
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Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics 65

8 The continuum is still not completely understood, since the continuum

hypothesis is not settled by the standard axioms of set theory. On the other
hand, no ‘constructive’ analogue of the continuum has been found that is
acceptable to the majority of mathematicians.

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Mathematische Annalen 65, 261–81. English translation in van Heijenoort
(1967), 200–215.

Penelope Rush
University of Tasmania
From the time Penny Rush completed her thesis in the philosophy of mathematics (2005),
she has worked continuously on themes around the realism/anti-realism divide and the
nature of mathematics. Her edited collection The Metaphysics of Logic (Cambridge
University Press, 2014), and forthcoming essay ‘Metaphysical Optimism’ (Philosophy
Supplement), highlight a particular interest in the idea of reality itself and curiosity and
respect as important philosophical methodologies.

Stewart Shapiro
The Ohio State University
Stewart Shapiro is the O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University, a
Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut, and a Professorial Fellow
at the University of Oslo. His major works include Foundations without Foundationalism
(1991), Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology (1997), Vagueness in Context
(2006), and Varieties of Logic (2014). He has taught courses in logic, philosophy of
mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, Jewish philosophy, social
and political philosophy, and medical ethics.

About the Series

This Cambridge Elements series provides an extensive overview of the philosophy
of mathematics in its many and varied forms. Distinguished authors will provide an
up-to-date summary of the results of current research in their fields and give their own
take on what they believe are the most significant debates influencing research, drawing
original conclusions.

Elements in the Series

Mathematical Structuralism
Geoﬀrey Hellman and Stewart Shapiro
A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers
John Stillwell

A full series listing is available at: www.cambridge.org/EPM

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A Concise History of Mathematics For Philosophers - John Stillwell - 2019 - Cambridge University Press - 9781108456234 - Anna's Archive

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A Concise History of Mathematics For Philosophers - John Stillwell - 2019 - Cambridge University Press - 9781108456234 - Anna's Archive

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Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics

Abstract: This Element aims to present an outline of mathematics and its

Keywords: mathematics, philosophy

© John Stillwell 2019

1 Irrational Numbers and Geometry 2

2 Inﬁnity in Greek Mathematics 8

4 Calculus and Inﬁnitesimals 21

5 Continuous Functions and Real Numbers 30

6 From Non-Euclidean Geometry to Arithmetic 35

7 Set Theory and Its Paradoxes 44

9 Unsolvability and Incompleteness 57

I thank Jeremy Avigad, Rossella Lupacchini, Wilfried Sieg, and an anon-

1 Irrational Numbers and Geometry

1.1 The Pythagorean Theorem

Figure 1 The Pythagorean theorem.

Figure 2 Seeing the Pythagorean theorem.

l ¼ m=n ) 2 ¼ m2 =n2 (squaring both sides)

Since it is contradictory to assume that l is a ratio of whole numbers, l is an

1.3 Operations on Lengths and Numbers

Figure 3 The sum of two lengths.

Figure 4 The product of three lengths.

Figure 5 Non-parallel lines.

He was 40 yeares old before he looked on geometry; which happened

Proposition 47 of Book I, incidentally, is the Pythagorean theorem. The

This rather long-winded statement is illustrated in Figure 5. The line n falls on

1.5 Philosophical Issues

Intuition and logic. Probably in an attempt to work precisely with geometric

Discrete and continuous. Because of its sensitivity to irrational quantities,

In other words, mathematicians consider things to be the same if they have

2 Inﬁnity in Greek Mathematics

The number-free theory of area, used by Euclid to prove the Pythagorean

2.1 Irrationality and Non-termination

When a pair of identical numbers is obtained, that number is gcdða;bÞ, because

Figure 6 Equality of parallelogram and rectangle.

Figure 7 Equality of triangle and half rectangle.

2.2 Areas and Volumes

Figure 8 Filling the parabolic segment with triangles.

Figure 9 Filling the tetrahedron with prisms.

so 4S S ¼ 4 and therefore S ¼ 4=3. (This risky calculation with inﬁnite sums

which equals 1/3.

2.3 The Method of Exhaustion

This can be done by ﬁnding the ﬁnite sum

2.4 The Theory of Proportions

a < b ⇔ there is a rational m=n with a < m=n < b;

2.5 Archimedes and Actual Inﬁnity

2.6 Philosophical Issues

Continuous and discrete. Processes with an inﬁnite number of discrete

3.1 Quadratic and Cubic Equations

3.2 Bombelli’s Algebra of Imaginary Numbers

ð2 þ iÞ3 ¼ 2 þ 11i and ð2 iÞ3 ¼ 2 11i;

3.3 The Convenience of Imaginary Numbers

1 The trigonometric formulas

cosðθ þ ’Þ ¼ cos θ cos ’ sin θ sin ’

are more concisely (and memorably) expressed by the single formula

cosðθ þ ’Þ þ i sinðθ þ ’Þ ¼ ðcos θ þ i sin θÞðcos ’ þ i sin ’Þ:

2 The latter formula can be even more concisely expressed by

eiðθþ’Þ ¼ eiθ ei’ ;

3 If a;b;c;d are positive integers then the product of a2 þ b2 and c2 þ d 2 is itself

a2 þ b2 ¼ a2 ðibÞ2 ¼ ða þ ibÞða ibÞ

using the identity x2 y2 ¼ ðx þ yÞðx yÞ. Combining the factorizations,

ða2 þ b2 Þðc2 þ d 2 Þ ¼ ½ða þ ibÞðc þ idÞ½ða ibÞðc idÞ

¼ ðac bdÞ2 þ ðad þ bcÞ2 :

3.4 Realizing the Imaginary

ða1 ;b1 Þ þ ða2 ;b2 Þ ¼ ða1 þ a2 ;b1 þ b2 Þ

ða1 þ ib1 Þða2 þ ib2 Þ ¼ c þ id ⇔ a1 a2 b1 b2 ¼ c and a1 b2 þ a2 b1 ¼ d:

Figure 10 The geometry of a complex number.

do is imagine a plane of complex numbers, with a þ ib represented by the

eiθ ¼ cos θ þ i sin θ;

so the complex numbers unite trigonometry with the exponential function. In

3.5 Philosophical Issues

Meaning and existence. Imaginary numbers at ﬁrst were accorded merely

4 Calculus and Inﬁnitesimals

arguments by routine calculations, so once again convenience overcame any

ða2 þ b2 Þðc2 þ d 2 Þ ¼ ½ða þ ibÞðc þ idÞ½ða ibÞðc idÞ

ðx1 ;y1 Þ ðx2 ;y2 Þ ¼ x1 x2 þ y1 y2 :

ðt1 ;x1 ;y1 ;z1 Þ ðt2 ;x2 ;y2 ;z2 Þ ¼ t1 t2 þ x1 x2 þ y1 y2 þ z1 z2 :