From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jun 12 15:22:25 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 12 Jun 2001 22:22:23 -0000 Received: (qmail 97379 invoked from network); 12 Jun 2001 22:22:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 12 Jun 2001 22:22:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.169.75.101) by mta2 with SMTP; 12 Jun 2001 22:22:16 -0000 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 159wYA-0004Dg-00 for ; Tue, 12 Jun 2001 15:22:14 -0700 Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 15:22:14 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Message-ID: <20010612152214.L14438@digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010612071438.00dae700@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.18i From: Robin Lee Powell On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 12:50:20PM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: > The best recent example is non-standard arithmetic, which comes in two > forms, one from Robinson's model theory, and the other from Conway's > advances in game theory. Both provide consistent but significantly > different arithmetics with actual infinitesimals, and both can be > extended to analysis. Without the appropriate definitions of terms and > proofs of theorems, there is no way anybody outside the field can > understand what either form is talking about, since mathematicians had > previously "proved" that arithmetic with infinitesimals was > impossible, and in particular Peano thought that he had proved the > impossibility of any non-standard models of the natural numbers. As someone who almost has a math degree , I'm intrigued. What are infinitesimals, and where do I find out about game-theory based arithmetic? -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. le datni cu djica le nu zifre .iku'i .oi le so'e datni cu to'e te pilno je xlali -- RLP http://www.lojban.org/