2. THE COMPATIBILITY OF THE ARITHMETICAL AXIOMS.
When we are engaged in investigating the foundations of a science, we must set up a system of axioms which contains an exact and complete description of the relations subsisting between the elementary ideas of that science. The axioms so set up are at the same time the definitions of those elementary ideas; and no statement within the realm of the science whose foundation we are testing is held to be correct unless it can be derived from those axioms by means of a finite number of logical steps. Upon closer consideration the question arises:Whether, in any way, certain statements of single axioms depend upon one another, and whether the axioms may not therefore contain certain parts in common, which must be isolated if one wishes to arrive at a system of axioms that shall be altogether independent of one another.
But above all I wish to designate the following as the most important among the numerous questions which can be asked with regard to the axioms:To prove that they are not contradictory, that is, that a finite number of logical steps based upon them can never lead to contradictory results.
In geometry, the proof of the compatibility of the axioms can be effected by constructing a suitable field of numbers, such that analogous relations between the numbers of this field correspond to the geometrical axioms. Any contradiction in the deductions from the geometrical axioms must thereupon be recognizable in the arithmetic of this field of numbers. In this way the desired proof for the compatibility of the geometrical axioms is made to depend upon the theorem of the compatibility of the arithmetical axioms.
On the other hand a direct method is needed for the proof of the compatibility of the arithmetical axioms. The axioms of arithmetic are essentially nothing else than the known rules of calculation, with the addition of the axiom of continuity. I recently collected them[4]and in so doing replaced the axiom of continuity by two simpler axioms,namely, the well-known axiom of Archimedes, and a new axiom essentially as follows: that numbers form a system of things which is capable of no further extension, as long as all the other axioms hold (axiom of completeness). I am convinced that it must be possible to find a direct proof for the compatibility of the arithmetical axioms, by means of a careful study and suitable modification of the known methods of reasoning in the theory of irrational numbers.
To show the significance of the problem from another point of view, I add the following observation: If contradictory attributes be assigned to a concept, I say, thatmathematically the concept does not exist. So, for example, a real number whose square isdoes 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. In the case before us, where we are concerned with the axioms of real numbers in arithmetic, the proof of the compatibility of the axioms is at the same time the proof of the mathematical existence of the complete system of real numbers or of the continuum. Indeed, when the proof for the compatibility of the axioms shall be fully accomplished, the doubts which have been expressed occasionally as to the existence of the complete system of real numbers will become totally groundless. The totality of real numbers,i. e., the continuum according to the point of view just indicated, is not the totality of all possible series in decimal fractions, or of all possible laws according to which the elements of a fundamental sequence may proceed. It is rather a system of things whose mutual relations are governed by the axioms set up and for which all propositions, and only those, are true which can be derived from the axioms by a finite number of logical processes. In my opinion, the concept of the continuum is strictly logically tenable in this sense only. It seems to me, indeed, that this corresponds best also to what experience and intuition tell us. The concept of the continuum or even that of the system of all functions exists, then, in exactly the same sense as the system of integral, rational numbers, for example, or as Cantor's higher classes of numbers and cardinal numbers. For I am convinced that the existence of the latter, just as that of the continuum, can be proved in the sense I have described; unlike thesystem of all cardinal numbers or ofallCantor's alephs, for which, as may be shown, a system of axioms, compatible in my sense, cannot be set up. Either of these systems is, therefore, according to my terminology, mathematically non-existent.
From the field of the foundations of geometry I should like to mention the following problem:
[4]Jahresbericht der Deutchen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, vol. 8 (1900), p. 180.
[4]Jahresbericht der Deutchen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, vol. 8 (1900), p. 180.