Single Idea 14145

[catalogued under 6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / e. Ordinal numbers]

Full Idea

In his most recent article Cantor speaks of ordinals as types of order, not as numbers.

Gist of Idea

For Cantor ordinals are types of order, not numbers

Source

Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §298)

Book Reference

Russell,Bertrand: 'Principles of Mathematics' [Routledge 1992], p.321


A Reaction

Russell likes this because it supports his own view of ordinals as classes of serial relations. It has become orthodoxy to refer to heaps of things as 'numbers' when the people who introduced them may not have seen them that way.