Zermelo, Ernst (1871–1953)

Author(s):  
Volker Peckhaus

The German mathematician Ernst Zermelo is today best known for his axiomatization of set theory (1908b), presented in the spirit of Hilbert’s early axiomatic programme. Originally working in the calculus of variations and mathematical physics, Zermelo concentrated on set theory after proving that every set can be well-ordered (1904). His proof, based on the axiom of choice, provoked a lively controversy. In the 1930s Zermelo worked on infinitary logic, trying to overcome Gödel’s incompleteness results.

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akihiro Kanamori

Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Zermelo (1871–1953) transformed the set theory of Cantor and Dedekind in the first decade of the 20th century by incorporating the Axiom of Choice and providing a simple and workable axiomatization setting out generative set-existence principles. Zermelo thereby tempered the ontological thrust of early set theory, initiated the delineation of what is to be regarded as set-theoretic, drawing out the combinatorial aspects from the logical, and established the basic conceptual framework for the development of modern set theory. Two decades later Zermelo promoted a distinctive cumulative hierarchy view of models of set theory and championed the use of infinitary logic, anticipating broad modern developments. In this paper Zermelo's published mathematical work in set theory is described and analyzed in its historical context, with the hindsight afforded by the awareness of what has endured in the subsequent development of set theory. Elaborating formulations and results are provided, and special emphasis is placed on the to and fro surrounding the Schröder-Bernstein Theorem and the correspondence and comparative approaches of Zermelo and Gödel. Much can be and has been written about philosophical and biographical issues and about the reception of the Axiom of Choice, and we will refer and defer to others, staying the course through the decidedly mathematical themes and details.


Author(s):  
Alexander R. Pruss

This is a mainly technical chapter concerning the causal embodiment of the Axiom of Choice from set theory. The Axiom of Choice powered a construction of an infinite fair lottery in Chapter 4 and a die-rolling strategy in Chapter 5. For those applications to work, there has to be a causally implementable (though perhaps not compatible with our laws of nature) way to implement the Axiom of Choice—and, for our purposes, it is ideal if that involves infinite causal histories, so the causal finitist can reject it. Such a construction is offered. Moreover, other paradoxes involving the Axiom of Choice are given, including two Dutch Book paradoxes connected with the Banach–Tarski paradox. Again, all this is argued to provide evidence for causal finitism.


2010 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 996-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyriakos Keremedis ◽  
Eleftherios Tachtsis

AbstractWe establish the following results:1. In ZF (i.e., Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory minus the Axiom of Choice AC), for every set I and for every ordinal number α ≥ ω, the following statements are equivalent:(a) The Tychonoff product of ∣α∣ many non-empty finite discrete subsets of I is compact.(b) The union of ∣α∣ many non-empty finite subsets of I is well orderable.2. The statement: For every infinite set I, every closed subset of the Tychonoff product [0, 1]Iwhich consists offunctions with finite support is compact, is not provable in ZF set theory.3. The statement: For every set I, the principle of dependent choices relativised to I implies the Tychonoff product of countably many non-empty finite discrete subsets of I is compact, is not provable in ZF0 (i.e., ZF minus the Axiom of Regularity).4. The statement: For every set I, every ℵ0-sized family of non-empty finite subsets of I has a choice function implies the Tychonoff product of ℵ0many non-empty finite discrete subsets of I is compact, is not provable in ZF0.


Axioms ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitri Shakhmatov ◽  
Víctor Yañez

We give a “naive” (i.e., using no additional set-theoretic assumptions beyond ZFC, the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of set theory augmented by the Axiom of Choice) example of a Boolean topological group G without infinite separable pseudocompact subsets having the following “selective” compactness property: For each free ultrafilter p on the set N of natural numbers and every sequence ( U n ) of non-empty open subsets of G, one can choose a point x n ∈ U n for all n ∈ N in such a way that the resulting sequence ( x n ) has a p-limit in G; that is, { n ∈ N : x n ∈ V } ∈ p for every neighbourhood V of x in G. In particular, G is selectively pseudocompact (strongly pseudocompact) but not selectively sequentially pseudocompact. This answers a question of Dorantes-Aldama and the first listed author. The group G above is not pseudo- ω -bounded either. Furthermore, we show that the free precompact Boolean group of a topological sum ⨁ i ∈ I X i , where each space X i is either maximal or discrete, contains no infinite separable pseudocompact subsets.


1962 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 105-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katuzi Ono

The theory of mathematical objects, developed in this work, is a trial system intended to be a prototype of set theory. It concerns, with respect to the only one primitive notion “proto-membership”, with a field of mathematical objects which we shall hereafter simply call objects, it is a very simple system, because it assumes only one axiom scheme which is formally similar to the aussonderung axiom of set theory. We shall show that in our object theory we can construct a theory of sets which is stronger than the Zermelo set-theory [1] without the axiom of choice.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1234-1256 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS STREICHER

In a sequence of papers (Krivine 2001; Krivine 2003; Krivine 2009), J.-L. Krivine introduced his notion of classical realisability for classical second-order logic and Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. Moreover, in more recent work (Krivine 2008), he has considered forcing constructions on top of it with the ultimate aim of providing a realisability interpretation for the axiom of choice.The aim of the current paper is to show how Krivine's classical realisability can be understood as an instance of the categorical approach to realisability as started by Martin Hyland in Hyland (1982) and described in detail in van Oosten (2008). Moreover, we will give an intuitive explanation of the iteration of realisability as described in Krivine (2008).


1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. P. Monro

AbstractLet ZF denote Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (without the axiom of choice), and let M be a countable transitive model of ZF. The method of forcing extends M to another model M[G] of ZF (a “generic extension”). If the axiom of choice holds in M it also holds in M[G], that is, the axiom of choice is preserved by generic extensions. We show that this is not true for many weak forms of the axiom of choice, and we derive an application to Boolean toposes.


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