Fundamentos de la matemática

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(el texto de Hilbert y Bernays)

Para Grundlagen der Mathematik, véase the book by Hilbert and Bernays.

Los Fundamentos de la matemática son el estudio de conceptos matemáticos básicos

(como números, figuras geométricas, conjuntos, funciones...) y como forman jerarquías de
estructuras y conceptos más complejos, especialmente las estructuras fundamentalmente
importantes que forman el lenguaje de la matemática (fórmulas, teorías y sus modelos,
dando un significado a las fórmulas, definiciones, pruebas, algoritmos...) también llamados
conceptos metamatemáticos, con un ojo en los aspectos filosóficos y la unidad de la
matemática. La búsqueda por los fundamentos de la matemática es una pregunta central de
la filosofía de las matemáticas; la naturaleza abstracta de los objetos matemáticos presenta
desafíos filosóficos especiales.

Pero los fundamentos de la matemática como un todo no apuntan a contener los

fundamentos de cada tópico matemático. Generalmente, los fundamentos de un campo de
estudio, se refieren a un análisis más o menos sistemático de sus conceptos fundamentales
más básicos, su unidad conceptual y su ordenamiento natural o jerarquía de conceptos, los
cuales podrían ayudar a conectarlos con el resto del conocimiento humano. Pero el
desarrollo, emergencia y aclaración de los fundamentos puede aparecer tarde en la historia
de un campo, y podría no ser visto por cualquiera como su parte más interesante.

La matemática siempre jugaron un rol especial en el pensamiento científico, sirviendo

desde tiempos antiguos como modelo de verdad y rigor para la inquisición racional, y
dando herramientas o incluso fundamentos para otras ciencias (especialmente la física).
Pero lo mucho de la matemática hacia abstracciones más elevadas en el siglo XIX, trajeron
paradojas y desafíos nuevos, exigiendo un examen más profundo y sistemático de la
naturaleza y el criterio de la verdad matemática, así como también una unificación de las
diversas ramas de la matemática en un todo coherente.

La búsqueda sistemática de los fundamentos de la matemática empezó al fin del siglo XIX,
y formó una disciplina matemática nueva llamada lógica matemática, con fuertes vínculos
con la ciencia de la computación teórica. Fue mediante una serie de crisis con resultados
paradójicos, hasta que los descubrimientos se estabilizaron durante el siglo XX como un
amplio y coherente cuerpo de conocimiento matemático con muchísimos aspectos o
componentes (teoría de conjuntos, teoría de modelos, teoría de pruebas...), cuyas
propiedades detalladas y posibles variantes aún están en campo de investigación activa. Su
alto nivel de sofisticación técnica inspiró a muchos filósofos a conjeturar que puede servir
como modelo o patrón para los fundamentos de otras ciencias.

Índice
[ocultar]

 1 Crisis de los fundamentos

o 1.1 Perspectivas filosóficas
 1.1.1 Formalismo
 1.1.2 Intuicionismo
 1.1.3 Logicismo
 1.1.4 Platonismo de Teoría de conjuntos
 1.1.5 Argumento de indispensabilidad para el realismo
 1.1.6 Realismo Duro y listo
 1.1.7 Consecuencias filosóficas para el teorema de la completitud
o 1.2 Más paradojas
 2 Resolución parcial de la crisis
 3 Evolución histórica
o 3.1 Matemática en la Antigua Grecia
o 3.2 Platonismo como una filosofía tradicional de la matemática
o 3.3 Edad media y Renacimiento
o 3.4 Siglo XIX
 3.4.1 Análisis sobre los reales
 3.4.2 Teoría de grupos
 3.4.3 Geometrías no-euclidianas
 3.4.4 Geometría proyectiva
 3.4.5 Algebra Booleana y lógica
 3.4.6 Aritmetica de Peano
 4 Véase también
 5 Notas
 6 Referencias
 7 Links externos
 8 Fundamentos filosóficos de la matemática
o 8.1 Platonismo
o 8.2 Formalismo
o 8.3 Intuicionismo
o 8.4 Logicismo
o 8.5 Constructivismo
 9 Véase también
 10 Referencias

Crisis de los fundamentos[editar]

La crisis fundacional de la matemática (llamada originalmente en alemán: Grundlagenkrise
der Mathematik) fue un término acuñado a principios del siglo XX para referirse a la
situación teórica que llevó a una investigación sistemática y profundamente de los
fundamentos de la matemática, y que acabó inaugurando una nueva rama de la matemática.

Numerosas escuelas filosóficas matemáticas incurrieron en dificultades una tras otras, a

medida que la asunción de que los fundamentos de las podían ser justificados de manera
consistentes dentro de la propia matemática fue puesta en duda por el descubrimiento de
varias paradojas (entre ellas la célebre paradoja de Russell).

El término "paradoja" no debe ser confundido con el término contradicción. Una

contradicción dentro de una teoría formal es una demostración formal de la existencia de un
absurdo como resultado de un conjunto de asunciones inapropiadas (tales como 2 + 2 = 5),
un conjunto de axiomas o teoría que da lugar a una contradicción se clasifica de
inconsistente y debe ser rechazada como teoría útil (ya que en ella cualquier proposición
acabaría siendo demostrable). Sin embargo, una paradoja puede referirse o bien a un
resultado contraintuitivo pero verdadero, o a un argumento informal que lleva a una
contradicción, así que una teoría candidata donde se atente la formalización de un
argumento debe inhabilitar al menos uno de sus pasos; en este caso el problema es
encontrar una teoría satisfactoria sin contradicciones. Ambos significados pueden aplicar si
la versión formalizada del argumento forma la prueba de una verdad sorprendente. Por
ejemplo, la paradoja de Russell puede ser expresada como "no hay un conjunto que
contenga a todos los conjuntos" (exceptuando algunas teorías axiomáticas marginales).

Algunas escuelas de pensamiento al buscar acercarse al enfoque correcto a los fundamentos

de la matemática se oponían ferozmente entre si. La escuela liderante era la escuela de
enfoque formalista, de la cual, David Hilbert era el proponente principal, culminando con lo
que se conoce como Programa de Hilbert, quien pensaba en fundamentar la matemática en
una pequeña base de un sistema lógico sondeado en términos del finitismo
metamatemático. El oponente principal era la escuela del intuicionismo, liderada por L. E.
J. Brouwer, quien resueltamente descartó el formalismo como un juego futil con símbolos
(van Dalen, 2008). La pelea fue acrimoniosa. En 1920 Hilbert triunfó en sacar a Brouwer, a
quien él consideraba una amenaza a la matemática, removiéndolo del tablón editorial del
Mathematische Annalen, la revista líder en matemáticas en aquella época.

Perspectivas filosóficas[editar]

Artículo principal: Filosofía de la matemática

A principios del siglo XX, tres escuelas de filosofía de la matemática tenían visiones
contrapuestas sobre los fundamentos matemáticos: el Formalismo, el Intuicionismo y el
Logicismo.

Formalismo[editar]

Artículo principal: Formalismo (matemática)

La postura de los formalistas, tal como fue enunciada por David Hilbert (1862–1943), es
que la matemática es sólo un lenguaje formal y una serie de juegos. De hecho, Hilbert usó
el término "juego de fórmulas" en su respuesta de 1927 al criticismo de L. E. J. Brouwer:

"And to what has the formula game thus made possible been successful? This
formula game enables us to express the entire thought-content of the science of
mathematics in a uniform manner and develop it in such a way that, at the same
time, the interconnections between the individual propositions and facts become
clear . . . The formula game that Brouwer so deprecates has, besides its
mathematical value, an important general philosophical significance. For this
formula game is carried out according to certain definite rules, in which the
technique of our thinking is expressed. These rules form a closed system that can be
discovered and definitively stated.".1

Por tanto, Hilbert insistió que la matemática no es un juego "arbitrario" con reglas
"arbitrarias", sino más bien un juego que debe coincidir con nuestro pensamiento, que son
el punto de partida de nuestra exposición oral y escrita.1

"We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a
game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules. Rather, it is a
conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no
means otherwise".2

La filosofía inicial del formalismo, tal como es ejemplicada por David Hilbert, es una
respuesta a las paradojas de la teoría axiomática de conjuntos, que se basa en la lógica
formal. Virtually all mathematical theorems today can be formulated as theorems of set
theory. The truth of a mathematical statement, in this view, is represented by the fact that
the statement can be derived from the axioms of set theory using the rules of formal logic.

Merely the use of formalism alone does not explain several issues: why we should use the
axioms we do and not some others, why we should employ the logical rules we do and not
some others, why do "true" mathematical statements (e.g., the laws of arithmetic) appear to
be true, and so on. Hermann Weyl would ask these very questions of Hilbert:

"What "truth" or objectivity can be ascribed to this theoretic construction of the

world, which presses far beyond the given, is a profound philosophical problem. It
is closely connected with the further question: what impels us to take as a basis
precisely the particular axiom system developed by Hilbert? Consistency is indeed a
necessary but not a sufficient condition. For the time being we probably cannot
answer this question . . .."3

In some cases these questions may be sufficiently answered through the study of formal
theories, in disciplines such as reverse mathematics and computational complexity theory.
As noted by Weyl, Formal logical systems also run the risk of inconsistency; in Peano
arithmetic, this arguably has already been settled with several proofs of consistency, but
there is debate over whether or not they are sufficiently finitary to be meaningful. Gödel's
second incompleteness theorem establishes that logical systems of arithmetic can never
contain a valid proof of their own consistency. What Hilbert wanted to do was prove a
logical system S was consistent, based on principles P that only made up a small part of S.
But Gödel proved that the principles P could not even prove P to be consistent, let alone S!

Intuicionismo[editar]

Artículo principal: Intuitionism

Intuitionists, such as L. E. J. Brouwer (1882–1966), hold that mathematics is a creation of

the human mind. Numbers, like fairy tale characters, are merely mental entities, which
would not exist if there were never any human minds to think about them.

The foundational philosophy of intuitionism or constructivism, as exemplified in the

extreme by Brouwer and more coherently by Stephen Kleene, requires proofs to be
"constructive" in nature – the existence of an object must be demonstrated rather than
inferred from a demonstration of the impossibility of its non-existence. For example, as a
consequence of this the form of proof known as reductio ad absurdum is suspect.

Some modern theories in the philosophy of mathematics deny the existence of foundations
in the original sense. Some theories tend to focus on mathematical practice, and aim to
describe and analyze the actual working of mathematicians as a social group. Others try to
create a cognitive science of mathematics, focusing on human cognition as the origin of the
reliability of mathematics when applied to the real world. These theories would propose to
find foundations only in human thought, not in any objective outside construct. The matter
remains controversial.

Intuicionistas , como LEJ Brouwer (1882-1966) , sostienen que la matemática es una

creación de la mente humana. Los números, como los personajes de cuentos de hadas , no
son más que entidades mentales, que no existiría si nunca hubo mentes humanas para
pensar en ellos.

La filosofía fundamental del intuicionismo o constructivismo , como se ejemplifica en

extremo por Brouwer y más coherente de Stephen Kleene , requiere pruebas para ser "
constructivo" en la naturaleza - la existencia de un objeto debe ser demostrada en lugar de
deducirse de una demostración de la imposibilidad de su no existencia. Por ejemplo , como
consecuencia de esta forma de la prueba conocida como reducción al absurdo es
sospechoso .

Algunas teorías modernas de la filosofía de las matemáticas niegan la existencia de bases

en el sentido original . Algunas teorías tienden a centrarse en la práctica matemática , y
tienen como objetivo describir y analizar el funcionamiento real de los matemáticos como
grupo social. Otros tratan de crear una ciencia cognitiva de las matemáticas , se centra en la
cognición humana como el origen de la fiabilidad de las matemáticas cuando se aplica al
mundo real. Estas teorías propondrían para encontrar bases sólo en el pensamiento
humano , no en cualquier construcción fuera de objetivo . La cuestión sigue siendo
controvertida
Logicismo[editar]

Artículo principal: Logicismo

El logicismo es una de la escuelas de pensamiento de filosofía de la matemática, que

considera que la matemática es básicamente una extensión de la lógica y por tanto una
buena parte de la misma o toda la matemática es reducible a la lógica. Bertrand Russell y
Alfred North Whitehead fueron partidarios de esta línea de pensamiento inaugurada por
Gottlob Frege.

Platonismo de Teoría de conjuntos[editar]

Many researchers in axiomatic set theory have subscribed to what is known as set-
theoretical Platonism, exemplified by mathematician Kurt Gödel.

Several set theorists followed this approach and actively searched for possible axioms that
may be considered as true for heuristic reasons and that would decide the continuum
hypothesis. Many large cardinal axioms were studied but the continuum hypothesis
remained independent from them. Other types of axioms were considered, but none of them
has as yet reached consensus as a solution to the continuum problem.

Argumento de indispensabilidad para el realismo[editar]

This argument by Willard Quine and Hilary Putnam says (in Putnam's shorter words),

quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable for science...; therefore

we should accept such quantification; but this commits us to accepting the existence
of the mathematical entities in question.

However Putnam was not a Platonist.

Realismo Duro y listo[editar]

Few mathematicians are typically concerned on a daily, working basis over logicism,
formalism or any other philosophical position. Instead, their primary concern is that the
mathematical enterprise as a whole always remains productive. Typically, they see this as
insured by remaining open-minded, practical and busy; as potentially threatened by
becoming overly-ideological, fanatically reductionistic or lazy. Such a view was expressed
by the Physics Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman

People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not…
If it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it —
that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of
layers… then that’s the way it is. But either way there’s Nature and she’s going to
come out the way She is. So therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn’t
predecide what it is we’re looking for only to find out more about it. Now you ask:
 “Why do you try to find out more about it?” If you began your investigation to get
an answer to some deep philosophical question, you may be wrong. It may be that
you can’t get an answer to that particular question just by finding out more about
the character of Nature. But that’s not my interest in science; my interest in science
is to simply find out about the world and the more I find out the better it is, I like to
find out…4
Philosophers, incidentally, say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for
science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong5

and also Steven Weinberg6

The insights of philosophers have occasionally benefited physicists, but generally in

a negative fashion—by protecting them from the preconceptions of other
philosophers.(...) without some guidance from our preconceptions one could do
nothing at all. It is just that philosophical principles have not generally provided us
with the right preconceptions.
Physicists do of course carry around with them a working philosophy. For most of
us, it is a rough-and-ready realism, a belief in the objective reality of the
ingredients of our scientific theories. But this has been learned through the
experience of scientific research and rarely from the teachings of philosophers. (...)
we should not expect [the philosophy of science] to provide today's scientists with
any useful guidance about how to go about their work or about what they are likely
to find. (...)
After a few years' infatuation with philosophy as an undergraduate I became
disenchanted. The insights of the philosophers I studied seemed murky and
inconsequential compared with the dazzling successes of physics and mathematics.
From time to time since then I have tried to read current work on the philosophy of
science. Some of it I found to be written in a jargon so impenetrable that I can only
think that it aimed at impressing those who confound obscurity with profundity. (...)
But only rarely did it seem to me to have anything to do with the work of science as
I knew it. (...)
I am not alone in this; I know of no one who has participated actively in the
advance of physics in the postwar period whose research has been significantly
helped by the work of philosophers. I raised in the previous chapter the problem of
what Wigner calls the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics; here I want to
take up another equally puzzling phenomenon, the unreasonable ineffectiveness of
philosophy.
Even where philosophical doctrines have in the past been useful to scientists, they
have generally lingered on too long, becoming of more harm than ever they were of
use.

He believed that any undecidability in mathematics, such as the continuum hypothesis,

could be potentially resolved despite the incompleteness theorem, by finding suitable
further axioms to add to set theory.

Consecuencias filosóficas para el teorema de la completitud[editar]

The Completeness theorem establishes an equivalence in first-order logic, between the
formal provability of a formula, and its truth in all possible models. Precisely, for any
consistent first-order theory it gives an "explicit construction" of a model described by the
theory; and this model will be countable if the language of the theory is countable.
However this "explicit construction" is not algorithmic. It is based on an iterative process of
completion of the theory, where each step of the iteration consists in adding a formula to
the axioms if it keeps the theory consistent; but this consistency question is only semi-
decidable (an algorithm is available to find any contradiction but if there is none this
consistency fact can remain unprovable).

This can be seen as a giving a sort of justification to the Platonist view that the objects of
our mathematical theories are real. More precisely, it shows that the mere assumption of the
existence of the set of natural numbers as a totality (an actual infinity) suffices to imply the
existence of a model (a world of objects) of any consistent theory. However several
difficulties remain:

 For any consistent theory this usually does not give just one world of objects, but an
infinity of possible worlds that the theory might equally describe, with a possible
diversity of truths between them.
 In the case of set theory, none of the models obtained by this construction resemble
the intended model, as they are countable while set theory intends to describe
uncountable infinities. Similar remarks can be made in many other cases. For
example, with theories that include arithmetic, such constructions generally give
models that include non-standard numbers, unless the construction method was
specifically designed to avoid them.

 As it gives models to all consistent theories without distinction, it gives no reason to

accept or reject any axiom as long as the theory remains consistent, but regards all
consistent axiomatic theories as referring to equally existing worlds. It gives no
indication on which axiomatic system should be preferred as a foundation of
mathematics.
 As claims of consistency are usually unprovable, they remain a matter of belief or
non-rigorous kinds of justifications. Hence the existence of models as given by the
completeness theorem needs in fact 2 philosophical assumptions: the actual infinity
of natural numbers and the consistency of the theory.

Another consequence of the completeness theorem is that it justifies the conception of

infinitesimals as actual infinitely small nonzero quantities, based on the existence of non-
standard models as equally legitimate to standard ones. This idea was formalized by
Abraham Robinson into the theory of nonstandard analysis. However this theory did not
look so simple and did not have much success.

Más paradojas[editar]

Véase también: List of undecidable problems

1920: Thoralf Skolem corrected Löwenheim's proof of what is now called the downward
Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, leading to Skolem's paradox discussed in 1922 (the existence
of countable models of ZF, making infinite cardinalities a relative property.

1922: Proof by Abraham Fraenkel that the axiom of choice cannot be proved from the
axioms of Zermelo's set theory with urelements.

1927: Werner Heisenberg published the Uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics

1931: Publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, showing that essential aspects of

Hilbert's program could not be attained. It showed how to construct, for any sufficiently
powerful and consistent recursively axiomatizable system – such as necessary to
axiomatize the elementary theory of arithmetic on the (infinite) set of natural numbers – a
statement that formally expresses its own unprovability, which he then proved equivalent to
the claim of consistency of the theory; so that (assuming the consistency as true), the
system is not powerful enough for proving its own consistency, let alone that a simpler
system could do the job. It thus became clear that the notion of mathematical truth can not
be completely determined and reduced to a purely formal system as envisaged in Hilbert's
program. This dealt a final blow to the heart of Hilbert's program, the hope that consistency
could be established by finitistic means (it was never made clear exactly what axioms were
the "finitistic" ones, but whatever axiomatic system was being referred to, it was a 'weaker'
system than the system whose consistency it was supposed to prove).

1935: Publication of the article by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen
arguing that quantum mechanics was incomplete, as its formalism was non-local, which the
authors assumed to not possibly reflect some true underlying mechanism that remained to
be discovered.

1936: Alfred Tarski proved his truth undefinability theorem.

1936: Alan Turing proved that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all
possible program-input pairs cannot exist.

1938: Gödel proved the consistency of the axiom of choice and of the Generalized
Continuum-Hypothesis.

1936 - 1937: Alonzo Church and Alan Turing, respectively, published independent papers
showing that a general solution to the Entscheidungsproblem is impossible: the universal
validity of statements in first-order logic is not decidable (it is only semi-decidable as given
by the completeness theorem).

1955: Pyotr Novikov showed that there exists a finitely presented group G such that the
word problem for G is undecidable.
1963: Paul Cohen showed that the Continuum Hypothesis is unprovable from ZFC. Cohen's
proof developed the method of forcing, which is now an important tool for establishing
independence results in set theory.

1964: John Stewart Bell published his inequalities showing that the predictions of quantum
mechanics in the EPR thought experiment are significantly different from the predictions of
a particular class of hidden variable theories (the local hidden variable theories). Inspired
by the fundamental randomness in physics, Gregory Chaitin starts publishing results on
Algorithmic Information theory (measuring incompleteness and randomness in
mathematics)

1966: Paul Cohen showed that the axiom of choice is unprovable in ZF even without
urelements.

1970: Hilbert's tenth problem is proven unsolvable: there is no recursive solution to decide
whether a Diophantine equation (multivariable polynomial equation) has a solution in
integers.

1971: Suslin's problem is proven to be independent from ZFC.

Resolución parcial de la crisis[editar]

A partir de 1935 el grupo Bourbaki de matemáticos franceses empezaron a publicar una
serie de libros para formalizar muchas áreas de matemáticas basados en los nuevos
fundamentos de la teoría de conjuntos.

The intuitionistic school did not attract many adherents among working mathematicians,
due to difficulties of constructive mathematics.

We may consider that Hilbert's program has been partially completed, so that the crisis is
essentially resolved, satisfying ourselves with lower requirements than Hibert's original
ambitions. His ambitions were expressed in a time when nothing was clear: we did not
know if mathematics could have a rigorous foundation at all. Now we can say that
mathematics has a clear and satisfying foundation made of set theory and model theory. Set
theory and model theory are clearly defined and the right foundation for each other.

There are many possible variants of set theory which differ in consistency strength, where
stronger versions (postulating higher types of infinities) contain formal proofs of the
consistency of weaker versions, but none contains a formal proof of its own consistency.
Thus the only thing we don't have is a formal proof of consistency of whatever version of
set theory we may prefer, such as ZF. But it is still possible to justify the consistency of ZF
in informal ways.7

In practice, most mathematicians either do not work from axiomatic systems, or if they do,
do not doubt the consistency of ZFC, generally their preferred axiomatic system. In most of
mathematics as it is practiced, the incompleteness and paradoxes of the underlying formal
theories never played a role anyway, and in those branches in which they do or whose
formalization attempts would run the risk of forming inconsistent theories (such as logic
and category theory), they may be treated carefully.

Toward the middle of the 20th century it turned out that set theory (ZFC or otherwise) was
inadequate as a foundation for some of the emerging new fields, such as homological
algebra[cita requerida], and category theory was proposed as an alternative foundation by Samuel
Eilenberg and others.[cita requerida]

Evolución histórica[editar]
Plantilla:Ver también

Matemática en la Antigua Grecia[editar]

Aunque que el uso práctico de la matemática fue desarrollada ya en civilizaciones de la

edad de bronce, el interés específico por sus aspectos fundacionales y teóricos parece
remontarse a la matemática helénica. Los primeros filósofos griegos discutieron
ampliamente sobre qué rama de la matemática era más antiuga, si la aritmética o la
geometría. Zenón de Elea (490 a. C - ca. 430 a. C.) formuló cuatro aporías que aparentan
mostrar que el cambio es imposible, que en esencia no fueron convenientemente aclaradas
hasta el desarrollo de matemática moderna.

La escuela pitagórica de matemática insistía originalmente en que solo existían los números
naturales y racionales. El descubrimiento de la irracionalidad de √2, la proporción de la
diagonal de un cuadrado con su lado (data del siglo V a.C), fue un golpe filosófico a dicha
escuela que solo aceptaron de mala gana. La discrepancia entre racionales y reales fue
finalmente resuelta por Eudoxo de Cnido, un estudiante de Platón, quien redujo la
comparación de las proporciones de los irracionales a comparaciones a comparaciones de
múltiples proporciones racionales, además de anticipar la definición de número real de
Richard Dedekind.

En su obra Segundos analíticos, Aristóteles (384 a.C - 322 a.C) asentó el método
axiomático, para organizar lógicamente un campo del conocimiento en términos de
conceptos primitivos, axiomas, postulados, definiciones, y teoremas, tomando una mayoría
de sus ejemplos de la aritmética y la geometría. This method reached its high point with
Euclid's Elements (300 BC), a monumental treatise on geometry structured with very high
standards of rigor: each proposition is justified by a demonstration in the form of chains of
syllogisms (though they do not always conform strictly to Aristotelian templates).
Aristotle's syllogistic logic, together with the Axiomatic Method exemplified by Euclid's
Elements, are universally recognized as towering scientific achievements of ancient Greece.

Platonismo como una filosofía tradicional de la matemática[editar]

Starting from the end of the 19th century, a Platonist view of mathematics became common
among practicing mathematicians.
The objects of mathematics are abstract and remote from everyday perceptual experience:
geometrical figures are conceived as idealities to be distinguished from effective drawings
and shapes of objects, and numbers are not confused with the counting of concrete objects.
Their existence and nature present special philosophical challenges: How do mathematical
objects differ from their concrete representation? Are they located in their representation, or
in our minds, or somewhere else? How can we know them?

The ancient Greek philosophers took such questions very seriously. Indeed, many of their
general philosophical discussions were carried on with extensive reference to geometry and
arithmetic. Plato (424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) insisted that mathematical objects, like other
platonic Ideas (forms or essences), must be perfectly abstract and have a separate, non-
material kind of existence, in a world of mathematical objects independent of humans. He
believed that the truths about these objects also exists independently of the human mind,
but is discovered by humans. In the Meno Plato’s teacher Socrates asserts that it is possible
to come to know this truth by a process akin to memory retrieval.

Above the gateway to Plato's academy appeared a famous inscription: "Let no one who is
ignorant of geometry enter here".

In this way Plato indicated his high opinion of geometry. He regarded geometry as ``the
first essential in the training of philosophers", because of its abstract character.

This philosophy of Platonist mathematical realism, is shared by many mathematicians. It

can be argued that Platonism somehow comes as a necessary assumption underlying any
mathematical work.8

In this view, the laws of nature and the laws of mathematics have a similar status, and the
effectiveness ceases to be unreasonable. Not our axioms, but the very real world of
mathematical objects forms the foundation.

Aristotle dissected and rejected this view in his Metaphysics. These questions provide
much fuel for philosophical analysis and debate.

Edad media y Renacimiento[editar]

For over 2,000 years, Euclid’s Elements stood as a perfectly solid foundation for
mathematics, as its methodology of rational exploration guided mathematicians,
philosophers, and scientists well into the 19th century.

The Middle Ages saw a dispute over the ontological status of the universals (platonic
Ideas): Realism asserted their existence independently of perception; conceptualism
asserted their existence within the mind only; nominalism, denied either, only seeing
universals as names of collections of individual objects (following older speculations that
they are words, "logos").
René Descartes published La Géométrie (1637) aimed to reduce geometry to algebra by
means of coordinate systems, giving algebra a more foundational role (while the Greeks
embedded arithmetic into geometry by identifying whole numbers with evenly spaced
points on a line). It became famous after 1649 and paved the way to infinitesimal calculus.

Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) in England and Leibniz (1646 – 1716) in Germany
independently developed the infinitesimal calculus based on heuristic methods greatly
efficient, but direly lacking rigorous justifications. Leibniz even went on to explicitly
describe infinitesimals as actual infinitely small numbers (close to zero). Leibniz also
worked on formal logic but most of his writings on it remained unpublished until 1903.

The Christian philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753), in his campaign against the
religious implications of Newtonian mechanics, wrote a pamphlet on the lack of rational
justifications of infinitesimal calculus:9 “They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities
infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?”

Then mathematics developed very rapidly and successfully in physical applications, but
with little attention to logical foundations.

Siglo XIX[editar]

In the 19th century, mathematics became increasingly abstract. Concerns about logical gaps
and inconsistencies in different fields led to the development of axiomatic systems.

Análisis sobre los reales[editar]

Cauchy (1789 - 1857) inició el proyecto de demostrar los teoremas de cálculo infinitesimal
sobre una base rigurosa, rechazando el principio de generalidad del álgebra usado por
diversos matemáticos durante el siglo XVIII. En su Cours d'Analyse ('Curso de análisis) de
1821, Cauchy definió las cantidades infinitesimales como sucesiones decrecientes que
convergen a 0, que pueden ser usadas para definir la continuidad. Aunque no formalizó
ninguna noción de convergencia.

La definición moderna del criterio (ε, δ) y la noción de función continua fueron

desarrollada por primera vez por Bolzano en 1817, pero durante un tiempo fue
relativametne poco conocida. Estas nociones dan un fundamente riguroso al cálculo
infinitesimal basado en el conjunto de los números reales, y resuleven claramente tanto las
paradojas de Zenón como los argumentos de Berkeley.

Mathematicians such as Karl Weierstrass (1815 – 1897) discovered pathological functions

such as continuous, nowhere-differentiable functions. Previous conceptions of a function as
a rule for computation, or a smooth graph, were no longer adequate. Weierstrass began to
advocate the arithmetization of analysis, to axiomatize analysis using properties of the
natural numbers. In 1858, Dedekind proposed a definition of the real numbers as cuts of
rational numbers. This reduction of real numbers and continuous functions in terms of
rational numbers and thus of natural numbers, was later integrated by Cantor in his set
theory, and axiomatized in terms of second order arithmetic by Hilbert and Bernays.

Teoría de grupos[editar]

For the first time, the limits of mathematics were explored. Niels Henrik Abel (1802 –
1829), a Norwegian, and Évariste Galois, (1811 – 1832) a Frenchman, investigated into the
solutions of various polynomial equations, and proved that there is no general algebraic
solution to equations of degree greater than four (Abel–Ruffini theorem). With these
concepts, Pierre Wantzel (1837) proved that straightedge and compass alone cannot trisect
an arbitrary angle nor double a cube, nor to construct a square equal in area to a given
circle. Mathematicians had vainly attempted to solve all of these problems since the time of
the ancient Greeks.

Abel and Galois's works opened the way for the developments of group theory (which will
be used to study symmetry in physics and other fields), and abstract algebra. Concepts of
vector spaces emerged from the conception of barycentric coordinates by Möbius in 1827,
to the modern definition of vector spaces and linear maps by Peano in 1888. Geometry was
no more limited to 3 dimensions. These concepts do not generalize numbers but combine
notions of functions and sets which are not yet formalized, breaking away from familiar
mathematical objects.

Geometrías no-euclidianas[editar]

After many failed attempts to derive the parallel postulate from other axioms, the study of
the still hypothetical hyperbolic geometry by Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728 – 1777) led
him to introduce the hyperbolic functions and compute the area of a hyperbolic triangle
(where the sum of angles is less than 180°). Then the Russian mathematician Nikolai
Lobachevsky (1792–1856) established in 1826 (and published in 1829) the coherence of
this geometry (thus the independence of the parallel postulate), in parallel with the
Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai (1802–60) in 1832, and with Gauss. Later in the
19th century, the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann developed Elliptic geometry,
another non-Euclidean geometry where no parallel can be found and the sum of angles in a
triangle is more than 180°. It was proved consistent by defining point to mean a pair of
antipodal points on a fixed sphere and line to mean a great circle on the sphere. At that
time, the main method for proving the consistency of a set of axioms was to provide a
model for it.

Geometría proyectiva[editar]

One of the traps in a deductive system is circular reasoning, a problem that seemed to befall
projective geometry until it was resolved by Karl von Staudt. As explained by Laptev &
Rosenfeld (1996):

In the mid-nineteenth century there was an acrimonious controversy between the

proponents of synthetic and analytic methods in projective geometry, the two sides
accusing each other of mixing projective and metric concepts. Indeed the basic
 concept that is applied in the synthetic presentation of projective geometry, the
cross-ratio of four points of a line, was introduced through consideration of the
lengths of intervals.

The purely geometric approach of von Staudt was based on the complete quadrilateral to
express the relation of projective harmonic conjugates. Then he created a means of
expressing the familiar numeric properties with his Algebra of Throws. English language
versions of this process of deducing the properties of a field can be found in either the book
by Oswald Veblen and John Young, Projective Geometry (1938), or more recently in John
Stillwell's Four Pillars of Geometry (2005). Stillwell writes on page 120

...projective geometry is simpler than algebra in a certain sense, because we use

only five geometric axioms to derive the nine field axioms.

The algebra of throws is commonly seen as a feature of cross-ratios since students

ordinarily rely upon numbers without worry about their basis. However, cross-ratio
calculations use metric features of geometry, features not admitted by purists. For instance,
in 1961 Coxeter wrote Introduction to Geometry without mention of cross-ratio.

Algebra Booleana y lógica[editar]

Attempts of formal treatment of mathematics had started with Leibniz and Lambert (1728 –
1777), and continued with works by algebraists such as George Peacock (1791 – 1858).
Systematic mathematical treatments of logic came with the British mathematician George
Boole (1847) who devised an algebra that soon evolved into what is now called Boolean
algebra, in which the only numbers were 0 and 1 and logical combinations (conjunction,
disjunction, implication and negation) are operations similar to the addition and
multiplication of integers. Also De Morgan publishes his laws (1847). Logic becomes a
branch of mathematics. Boolean algebra is the starting point of mathematical logic and has
important applications in computer science.

Charles Sanders Peirce built upon the work of Boole to develop a logical system for
relations and quantifiers, which he published in several papers from 1870 to 1885.

The German mathematician Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) presented an independent

development of logic with quantifiers in his Begriffsschrift (formula language) published in
1879, a work generally considered as marking a turning point in the history of logic. He
exposed deficiencies in Aristotle's Logic, and pointed out the 3 expected properties of a
mathematical theory

1. Consistency: impossibility to prove contradictory statements

2. Completeness: any statement is either provable or refutable (i.e. its negation is
provable).
3. Decidability: there is a decision procedure to test any statement in the theory.
He then showed in Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic) how arithmetic
could be formalised in his new logic.

Frege's work was popularized by Bertrand Russell near the turn of the century. But Frege's
two-dimensional notation had no success. Popular notations were (x) for universal and (∃x)
for existential quantifiers, coming from Giuseppe Peano and William Ernest Johnson until
the ∀ symbol was introduced by Gentzen in 1935 and became canonical in the 1960s.

From 1890 to 1905, Ernst Schröder published Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik in
three volumes. This work summarized and extended the work of Boole, De Morgan, and
Peirce, and was a comprehensive reference to symbolic logic as it was understood at the
end of the 19th century.

Aritmetica de Peano[editar]

The formalization of arithmetic (the theory of natural numbers) as an axiomatic theory,

started with Peirce in 1881, and continued with Richard Dedekind and Giuseppe Peano in
1888. This was still a second-order axiomatization (expressing induction in terms of
arbitrary subsets, thus with an implicit use of set theory) as concerns for expressing theories
in first-order logic were not yet understood. In Dedekind's work, this approach appears as
completely characterizing natural numbers and providing recursive definitions of addition
and multiplication from the successor function and mathematical induction.

Véase también[editar]
 Mathematical Logic
 Brouwer–Hilbert controversy
 Controversy over Cantor's theory
 Epistemology
 Euclid's Elements
 Liar paradox
 New Foundations
 Philosophy of mathematics
 Principia Mathematica
 Quasi-empiricism in mathematics
 Mathematical thought of Charles Peirce

Notas[editar]
1. ↑ Saltar a: a b Hilbert 1927 The Foundations of Mathematics in van Heijenoort 1967:475
2. Ir a ↑ p. 14 in Hilbert, D. (1919–20), Natur und Mathematisches Erkennen: Vorlesungen,
gehalten 1919–1920 in Göttingen. Nach der Ausarbeitung von Paul Bernays (Edited and
with an English introduction by David E. Rowe), Basel, Birkhauser (1992).
3. Ir a ↑ Weyl 1927 Comments on Hilbert's second lecture on the foundations of mathematics
in van Heijenoort 1967:484. Although Weyl the intuitionist believed that "Hilbert's view"
would ultimately prevail, this would come with a significant loss to philosophy: "I see in
 this a decisive defeat of the philosophical attitude of pure phenomenology, which thus
proves to be insufficient for the understanding of creative science even in the area of
cognition that is most primal and most readily open to evidence – mathematics" (ibid).
4. Ir a ↑ Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out p. 23
5. Ir a ↑ Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics, volume I, chapter 2.
6. Ir a ↑ Steven Weinberg, chapter Against Philosophy in Dreams of a final theory
7. Ir a ↑ A philosophical proof of consistency of ZF
8. Ir a ↑ Karlis Podnieks, Platonism, intuition and the nature of mathematics: 1. Platonism -
the Philosophy of Working Mathematicians
9. Ir a ↑ The Analyst, A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician

Referencias[editar]
 Avigad, Jeremy (2003) Number theory and elementary arithmetic, Philosophia
Mathematica Vol. 11, pp. 257–284
 Eves, Howard (1990), Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics
Third Edition, Dover Publications, INC, Mineola NY, ISBN 0-486-69609-X (pbk.)
cf §9.5 Philosophies of Mathematics pp. 266–271. Eves lists the three with short
descriptions prefaced by a brief introduction.
 Goodman, N.D. (1979), "Mathematics as an Objective Science", in Tymoczko (ed.,
1986).
 Hart, W.D. (ed., 1996), The Philosophy of Mathematics, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, UK.
 Hersh, R. (1979), "Some Proposals for Reviving the Philosophy of Mathematics", in
(Tymoczko 1986).
 Hilbert, D. (1922), "Neubegründung der Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung", Hamburger
Mathematische Seminarabhandlungen 1, 157–177. Translated, "The New
Grounding of Mathematics. First Report", in (Mancosu 1998).
 Katz, Robert (1964), Axiomatic Analysis, D. C. Heath and Company.
 Introduction to Meta-Mathematics (Tenth impression 1991 edición). Amsterdam
NY: North-Holland Pub. Co. 1991 [1952]. ISBN 0-7204-2103-9.

In Chapter III A Critique of Mathematic Reasoning, §11. The paradoxes, Kleene

discusses Intuitionism and Formalism in depth. Throughout the rest of the book he
treats, and compares, both Formalist (classical) and Intuitionist logics with an
emphasis on the former. Extraordinary writing by an extraordinary mathematician.

 Laptev, B.L. & B.A. Rozenfel'd (1996) Mathematics of the 19th Century:
Geometry, page 40, Birkhäuser ISBN 3-7643-5048-2 .
 Mancosu, P. (ed., 1998), From Hilbert to Brouwer. The Debate on the Foundations
of Mathematics in the 1920s, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
 Putnam, Hilary (1967), "Mathematics Without Foundations", Journal of Philosophy
64/1, 5–22. Reprinted, pp. 168–184 in W.D. Hart (ed., 1996).
 Putnam, Hilary (1975), "What is Mathematical Truth?", in Tymoczko (ed., 1986).
 Sudac, Olivier (Apr 2001). «The prime number theorem is PRA-provable».
Theoretical Computer Science 257 (1–2): pp. 185–239. doi:10.1016/S0304-
3975(00)00116-X.
  Troelstra, A. S. (no date but later than 1990), "A History of Constructivism in the
20th Century", http://staff.science.uva.nl/~anne/hhhist.pdf, A detailed survey for
specialists: §1 Introduction, §2 Finitism & §2.2 Actualism, §3 Predicativism and
Semi-Intuitionism, §4 Brouwerian Intuitionism, §5 Intuitionistic Logic and
Arithmetic, §6 Intuitionistic Analysis and Stronger Theories, §7 Constructive
Recursive Mathematics, §8 Bishop's Constructivism, §9 Concluding Remarks.
Approximately 80 references.
 Tymoczko, T. (1986), "Challenging Foundations", in Tymoczko (ed., 1986).
 Tymoczko, T. (ed., 1986), New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics, 1986.
Revised edition, 1998.
 van Dalen D. (2008), "Brouwer, Luitzen Egbertus Jan (1881–1966)", in Biografisch
Woordenboek van Nederland.
URL:http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn2/brouwerle
[13-03-2008]
 Weyl, H. (1921), "Über die neue Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik", Mathematische
Zeitschrift 10, 39–79. Translated, "On the New Foundational Crisis of
Mathematics", in (Mancosu 1998).
 Wilder, Raymond L. (1952), Introduction to the Foundations of Mathematics, John
Wiley and Sons, New York, NY.

Links externos[editar]
 Logic and Mathematics
 Foundations of Mathematics: past, present, and future, May 31, 2000, 8 pages.
 A Century of Controversy over the Foundations of Mathematics by Gregory
Chaitin.
 Set theory and foundations of mathematics
 Foundations of Mathematics mailing list

Plantilla:Lógica

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Los fundamentos de la matemática es un término a veces usado para ciertos campos de la

matemática, como la lógica matemática, teoría de conjuntos axiomática, teoría de la
demostración, teoría de modelos y la teoría de la recursividad. La búsqueda de fundamentos
de las matemáticas es también una pregunta central de la filosofía de las matemáticas.

Fundamentos filosóficos de la matemática[editar]

Artículo principal: Filosofía de la matemática
Resumen de las tres filosofías:

 Platonismo: platonistas, como Kurt Gödel (1906–1978), sostienen que los números
son abstractos, objetos necesariamente existentes, independientes de la mente
humana.
 Formalismo matemático: formalistas, como David Hilbert (1862–1943), sostienen
que la matemática no es ni más ni menos que un lenguaje matemático. Son
simplemente una serie de juegos.
 Intuicionismo: intuicionistas, como L. E. J. Brouwer (1882–1966), sostienen que la
matemática es una creación de la mente humana. Los números, como personajes de
cuentos de hadas, son simplemente entidades mentales, que no existirían sin que
nunca hubieran algunas mentes humanas que pensaran en ellos.

Platonismo[editar]

La filosofía fundamental del realismo matemático platónico, ejemplificado por el

matemático Kurt Gödel, propone la existencia del mundo de los objetos matemáticos
independiente de los seres humanos; las verdades de estos objetos son descubiertos por
seres humanos. Con este punto de vista, las leyes de la naturaleza y las leyes de la
matemática tienen una posición similar, y la efectividad deja de ser irrazonable. No
nuestros axiomas, pero el verdadero mundo de los objetos matemáticos constituye el
fundamento. La pregunta obvia entonces es, ¿cómo entramos en ese mundo?

Formalismo[editar]

La filosofía fundamental del formalismo, ejemplificado por David Hilbert, está basado en la
teoría axiomática de los conjuntos y la lógica formal. Prácticamente todos los teoremas
matemáticos actualmente pueden ser formulados como teoremas de la teoría de los
conjuntos. La verdad de un enunciado matemático, en este punto de vista, no es nada más
que la reclamación de que el enunciado puede ser derivado de los axiomas de la teoría de
los conjuntos, usando las reglas de la lógica formal.

Sólo el uso del formalismo no explica varias cuestiones: por qué debemos de usar axiomas
que hacemos y no otros, por qué debemos emplear las reglas de la lógica que hacemos y no
otras, por qué enunciados matemáticos verdaderos (como leyes de la aritmética) parecen ser
verdad, etc. En algunos casos esto puede ser suficientemente contestadas a través del
estudio de las teorías formales, en disciplinas como la matemática reversa y la teoría de
complejidad computacional.

Los sistemas lógicos formales también pueden correr el riesgo de la incoherencia; con
Peano aritmética, esto posiblemente se ha establecido con varias pruebas de coherencia,
pero hay un debate sobre si son lo suficientemente significativas. El segundo de los
Teoremas de incompletitud de Gödel establece que los sistemas lógicos de la aritmética no
pueden contener una prueba válida de su propia coherencia. Lo que Hilbert quería hacer era
probar un sistema lógico S que fuera coherente, basado en los principios P, que solo es
formado por una pequeña parte de S. Pero Gödel comprobó que los principios P no podían
ni siquiera comprobar que P fuera coherente, ¡por no hablar de sólo S!.

Intuicionismo[editar]

La filosofía fundamental del intuicionismo o constructivismo, ejemplificado al extremo por

Brouwer y con más coherencia por Stephen Kleene, requiere pruebas para ser
“constructivo” en la naturaleza – la existencia de un objeto puede ser demostrada, más no
inferida de una demostración de la imposibilidad de su inexistencia. Como una
consecuencia inmediata de esto, el intuicionismo no acepta como válido el método de
demostración conocido como reducción al absurdo.

Algunas teorías modernas en la filosofía de la matemática niegan la existencia de los

fundamentos en su sentido original. Algunas teorías tienden a enfocarse en la práctica
matemática, y a tener como objetivo el describir y analizar el verdadero trabajo de los
matemáticos, como un grupo social. Otros tratan de crear una ciencia cognitiva a la
matemática, enfocándose en la cognición humana como el origen de la confiabilidad en la
matemática cuando son aplicadas al mundo real. Estas teorías pueden proponer la búsqueda
de fundamentos sólo en el pensamiento humano, no en ningún objetivo afuera de la
construcción. Este asunto se mantiene en discusión.

Logicismo[editar]

El logicismo es una de las escuelas de pensamiento en la filosofía de la matemática, que

sostiene la teoría de que la matemática es una extensión de la lógica y que, por tanto, toda
la matemática o parte de ella es reducible a la lógica. Bertrand Russell y Alfred North
Whitehead defendieron esta teoría concebida por Gottlob Frege.

Constructivismo[editar]

Este artículo o sección tiene un estilo difícil de entender para los lectores
interesados en el tema.
Si puedes, por favor edítalo y contribuye a hacerlo más accesible para el público general, sin
eliminar los detalles técnicos que interesan a los especialistas.

Es una variante del empirismo, uno de sus defensores es Roger Apéry.1

 Critican el formalismo llevado hasta el extremo por el grupo de matemáticos

llamado Nicolas Bourbaki.
 Admiten la sucesión de los números naturales, más no el conjunto de los naturales,
 Cuestionan la lógica en que se fundamenta la matemática de Bourbaki.
 Proclaman la tercera opción respecto del principio del tercio excluido, a más de p y
~p, cabe otra salida.

Véase también[editar]
  Teoría de categorías
 Teoría de tipos
 Teoría de conjuntos
 Teoría de la recursión
 Lógica matemática
 Teoría de la demostración
 Teoría de modelos

Referencias[editar]
1. Ir a ↑ Roger Apéry (1984). «Matemática constructiva». Pensar La Matematica – Seminario
de Filosofía y Matemática de la Ecole Normale Supériure de París. dirigido por J.
Diedonné, M. Loi, y R. Thomm. Barcelona: Éditions du Seuil. ISBN 8472236145.