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Foundations of Arithmetic

Chapter · January 2007

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-8176-4603-5_4

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 4
Foundations
of Arithmetic

Although primarily a researcher in geometry, Mario Pieri wrote four papers that
addressed aspects of arithmetic:
1906d A Look at the New Logico-Mathematical Direction of the Deductive Sciences
1906e On an Arithmetical Definition of the Irrationals (completed in 1905)
1906g On the Consistency of the Axioms of Arithmetic
1907a On the Axioms of Arithmetic
The first three are introduced in the following paragraphs, and will be discussed in detail
in the second book of the present series. Section 4.1 presents historical background for
the 1906e, 1906g, and 1907a papers. The last, On the Axioms of Arithmetic, is translated
in entirety in section 4.2 and discussed in detail in section 4.3.

In his 1906d address for the inauguration of academic year 1906–1907 at the Royal
University of Catania, Pieri considered many questions in logic and metamathematics
and presented his views. In the remaining three papers he treated particular questions
in detail, presenting novel approaches.

Philip E. B. Jourdain has explained that in Pieri’s era there were three tendencies in
the way arithmetic theories regarded irrational numbers. They might be introduced as
signs with undetermined denotations but which are manipulated in a definite way, follow-
ing the practice of Georg Cantor and others. They might be characterized by postulates,
following Richard Dedekind and others’ discussions of the continuity of a line. Or, follow-
ing Dedekind’s “creation” of irrationals and its elaboration by Moritz Pasch, Bertrand
Russell, and others, they might be defined as constructs whose existence was guaranteed
by logic applied to the arithmetic of rational numbers, a theory already developed. Russell
defined real numbers as certain sets of rationals, and identified a bijection from the
rationals to a subset Q of the set R of all reals. Members of Q would take over the
former arithmetic role of the rationals; members of R – Q, he called irrational. In his
1906e paper, Pieri noted an objection to Russell’s definition: the awkwardness involved
in manipulating such sets in arithmetic as though they were individuals. Pieri proposed
 290 4 Foundations of Arithmetic

a technical solution, a minor but delicate change in the logic used at that time to reason
with sets.81

In his 1906g paper, Pieri explored the general question of proving consistency—
freedom from contradiction—of a hypothetical-deductive system. He then carried out
what today would be called a consistency proof for the arithmetic of natural numbers
relative to a system of set theory. He assumed that logic supports various elementary
set-theoretic considerations, including Dedekind’s definition of finite set as one not equi-
numerous with any proper subset. In today’s language, Pieri interpreted the condition
x is a natural number as x is the set of all sets equinumerous with a given finite set u;
given natural numbers y and z, he regarded y as succeeding z just when s F {t}  y
for some s  z and some individual t Õ s. Since the arithmetic of natural numbers could
be formulated as a hypothetical-deductive system with just two undefined notions, natural
number and successor, it remained for Pieri simply to verify that the interpretations of
the system’s postulates are entailed by logical principles. Of course, that would just show
that any contradiction in arithmetic would occur already in his logic of sets, which itself
had no guarantee of consistency. In their reviews of this paper for the Jahrbuch über die
Fortschritte der Mathematik and the Journal of Philosophy, Henri Fehr and Harold
Chapman Brown noted this relative nature of Pieri’s consistency proof. Such caution was
not universal. For example, Francesco Severi claimed that Pieri had proved that “the
consistency of the postulates of arithmetic can be established without leaving the domain
of pure logic.” Over the next quarter century, logicians would develop alternative set
theories that were more convenient and seemed more likely to be consistent. Severi
notwithstanding, they showed that no guarantee of consistency is possible for the
arithmetic of natural numbers nor for any set theory in which it can be interpreted.
Pieri’s interpretations are invalid in set theories commonly employed today: the sets
equinumerous with a particular nonempty finite set u do not themselves constitute a
set x that can be manipulated in such a theory.82

Pieri’s ideas on logical and metamathematical topics attracted further attention from
his contemporaries, in particular Henri Poincaré, whose comments in [1905–1906] 1996
are analyzed in the second book of the present series.

4.1 Historical Background

Mario Pieri contributed to the foundations of the arithmetic of natural numbers and of
real numbers. Over the centuries, a large mathematical literature emerged from the
analysis of our intuitions concerning these numbers. The present section reviews the
works with the greatest impact on Pieri’s thought.
81
Jourdain [1912] 1967, 495. G. Cantor 1879–1884, §9, Anmerkung zu §8 und §9. Dedekind [1872] 1963,
III–V; Pasch 1882a, §§1–3; Russell 1903, §259. Landau [1930] 1951, III–IV, is an exhaustively detailed
presentation of Russell’s construction, in the context of set theory commonly used today.
82
Brown 1906; Severi 1921, 340. For a thorough discussion of consistency proofs, see Fraenkel et al. 1973,
chapter V. It may be possible to cast a modified version of Pieri’s argument in the common
Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, or his original argument in a suitably modified set theory.

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