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Full Idea
It must not be supposed that we can obtain a new transfinite cardinal by merely adding one to it, or even by adding any finite number, or aleph-0. On the contrary, such puny weapons cannot disturb the transfinite cardinals.
Gist of Idea
You can't get a new transfinite cardinal from an old one just by adding finite numbers to it
Source
Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §288)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'Principles of Mathematics' [Routledge 1992], p.311
A Reaction
If you add one, the original cardinal would be a subset of the new one, and infinite numbers have their subsets equal to the whole, so you have gone nowhere. You begin to wonder whether transfinite cardinals are numbers at all.
| 18173 | Cardinality strictly concerns one-one correspondence, to test infinite sameness of size [Cantor, by Maddy] |
| 14138 | You can't get a new transfinite cardinal from an old one just by adding finite numbers to it [Russell] |
| 14140 | For every transfinite cardinal there is an infinite collection of transfinite ordinals [Russell] |
| 18200 | Very large sets should be studied in an 'if-then' spirit [Putnam] |
| 10480 | First-order logic can't discriminate between one infinite cardinal and another [Hodges,W] |
| 18175 | For any cardinal there is always a larger one (so there is no set of all sets) [Maddy] |
| 18172 | Infinity has degrees, and large cardinals are the heart of set theory [Maddy] |
| 18196 | An 'inaccessible' cardinal cannot be reached by union sets or power sets [Maddy] |
| 17890 | There are at least eleven types of large cardinal, of increasing logical strength [Koellner] |
| 15918 | Paradox: there is no largest cardinal, but the class of everything seems to be the largest [Lavine] |