blog/posts/peano.org

---
title: "Peano Axioms"
date: 2019-03-18
---

* Introduction

  I have recently bought the book /Category Theory/ from Steve
  Awodey [[ref-1][(1)]] (which is awesome, but probably the topic for another
  post), and a particular passage excited my curiosity:

  #+begin_quote
  Let us begin by distinguishing between the following things:
  i. categorical foundations for mathematics,
  ii. mathematical foundations for category theory.

  As for the first point, one sometimes hears it said that category
  theory can be used to provide “foundations for mathematics,” as an
  alternative to set theory.  That is in fact the case, but it is not
  what we are doing here. In set theory, one often begins with
  existential axioms such as “there is an infinite set” and derives
  further sets by axioms like “every set has a powerset,” thus
  building up a universe of mathematical objects (namely sets), which
  in principle suffice for “all of mathematics.”
  #+end_quote

  This statement is interesting because one often considers category
  theory as pretty "fundamental", in the sense that it has no issue
  with considering what I call "dangerous" notions, such as the
  category $\mathbf{Set}$ of all sets, and even the category
  $\mathbf{Cat}$ of all categories. Surely a theory this general,
  that can afford to study such objects, should provide suitable
  foundations for mathematics? Awodey addresses these issues very
  explicitly in the section following the quote above, and finds a
  good way of avoiding circular definitions.

  Now, I remember some basics from my undergrad studies about
  foundations of mathematics. I was told that if you could define
  arithmetic, you basically had everything else "for free" (as
  Kronecker famously said, "natural numbers were created by God,
  everything else is the work of men"). I was also told that two sets
  of axioms existed, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms][Peano axioms]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory][Zermelo-Fraenkel]]
  axioms. Also, I should steer clear of the axiom of choice if I
  could, because one can do [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox][strange things]] with it, and it is
  equivalent to many [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorn%27s_lemma][different statements]]. Finally (and this I knew
  mainly from /Logicomix/, I must admit), it is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems][impossible]] for a set
  of axioms to be both complete and consistent.

  Given all this, I realised that my knowledge of foundational
  mathematics was pretty deficient. I do not believe that it is a
  very important topic that everyone should know about, even though
  Gödel's incompleteness theorem is very interesting from a logical
  and philosophical standpoint. However, I wanted to go deeper on
  this subject.

  In this post, I will try to share my path through Peano's axioms
  [[ref-2][(2)]], because they are very simple, and it is easy to uncover basic
  algebraic structure from them.

* The Axioms

  The purpose of the axioms is to define a collection of objects
  that we will call the /natural numbers/. Here, we place ourselves
  in the context of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic][first-order logic]]. Logic is not the main topic
  here, so I will just assume that I have access to some
  quantifiers, to some predicates, to some variables, and, most
  importantly, to a relation $=$ which is reflexive, symmetric,
  transitive, and closed over the natural numbers.

  Without further digressions, let us define two symbols $0$ and $s$
  (called /successor/) such that:
  1. $0$ is a natural number.
  2. For every natural number $n$, $s(n)$ is a natural number. ("The
     successor of a natural number is a natural number.")
  3. For all natural number $m$ and $n$, if $s(m) = s(n)$, then
     $m=n$. ("If two numbers have the same successor, they are
     equal.")
  4. For every natural number $n$, $s(n) = 0$ is false. ("$0$ is
     nobody's successor.")
  5. If $A$ is a set such that:
     - $0$ is in $A$
     - for every natural number $n$, if $n$ is in $A$ then $s(n)$
       is in $A$
     then $A$ contains every natural number.

  Let's break this down. Axioms 1--4 define a collection of objects,
  written $0$, $s(0)$, $s(s(0))$, and so on, and ensure their basic
  properties. All of these are natural numbers by the first four
  axioms, but how can we be sure that /all/ natural numbers are of
  the form $s( \cdots s(0))$? This is where the /induction
  axiom/ (Axiom 5) intervenes. It ensures that every natural number
  is "well-formed" according to the previous axioms.

  But Axiom 5 is slightly disturbing, because it mentions a "set" and
  a relation "is in". This seems pretty straightforward at first
  sight, but these notions were never defined anywhere before that!
  Isn't our goal to /define/ all these notions in order to derive a
  foundation of mathematics? (I still don't know the answer to that
  question.) I prefer the following alternative version of the
  induction axiom:
  
  - If $\varphi$ is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_(mathematical_logic)][unary predicate]] such that:
    - $\varphi(0)$ is true
    - for every natural number $n$, if $\varphi(n)$ is true, then
      $\varphi(s(n))$ is also true
    then $\varphi(n)$ is true for every natural number $n$.

  The alternative formulation is much better in my opinion, as it
  obviously implies the first one (juste choose $\varphi(n)$ as "$n$
  is a natural number"), and it only references predicates. It will
  also be much more useful afterwards, as we will see.

* Addition

  What is needed afterwards? The most basic notion after the natural
  numbers themselves is the addition operator. We define an operator
  $+$ by the following (recursive) rules:
  1. $\forall a,\quad a+0 = a$.
  2. $\forall a, \forall b,\quad a + s(b) = s(a+b)$.

  Let us use these rules to prove the basic properties of $+$.

** Commutativity

   #+begin_proposition
   $\forall a, \forall b,\quad a+b = b+a$.
   #+end_proposition

   #+begin_proof
   First, we prove that every natural number commutes with $0$.
   - $0+0 = 0+0$.
   - For every natural number $a$ such that $0+a = a+0$, we have:
     \begin{align}
     0 + s(a) &= s(0+a)\\
     &= s(a+0)\\
     &= s(a)\\
     &= s(a) + 0.
     \end{align}
   By Axiom 5, every natural number commutes with $0$.

   We can now prove the main proposition:
   - $\forall a,\quad a+0=0+a$.
   - For all $a$ and $b$ such that $a+b=b+a$,
     \begin{align}
     a + s(b) &= s(a+b)\\
     &= s(b+a)\\
     &= s(b) + a.     
     \end{align}
   We used the opposite of the second rule for $+$, namely $\forall a,
   \forall b,\quad s(a) + b = s(a+b)$. This can easily be proved by
   another induction.
   #+end_proof

** Associativity

   #+begin_proposition
   $\forall a, \forall b, \forall c,\quad a+(b+c) = (a+b)+c$.
   #+end_proposition

   #+begin_proof
   Todo, left as an exercise to the reader 😉
   #+end_proof

** Identity element

   #+begin_proposition
   $\forall a,\quad a+0 = 0+a = a$.
   #+end_proposition

   #+begin_proof
   This follows directly from the definition of $+$ and commutativity.
   #+end_proof

  From all these properties, it follows that the set of natural
  numbers with $+$ is a commutative [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoid][monoid]].

* Going further

  We have imbued our newly created set of natural numbers with a
  significant algebraic structure. From there, similar arguments will
  create more structure, notably by introducing another operation
  $\times$, and an order $\leq$.

  It is now a matter of conventional mathematics to construct the
  integers $\mathbb{Z}$ and the rationals $\mathbb{Q}$ (using
  equivalence classes), and eventually the real numbers $\mathbb{R}$.

  It is remarkable how very few (and very simple, as far as you would
  consider the induction axiom "simple") axioms are enough to build an
  entire theory of mathematics. This sort of things makes me agree
  with Eugene Wigner [[ref-3][(3)]] when he says that "mathematics is the science
  of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for
  this purpose". We drew some arbitrary rules out of thin air, and
  derived countless properties and theorems from them, basically for
  our own enjoyment. (As Wigner would say, it is /incredible/ that any
  of these fanciful inventions coming out of nowhere turned out to be
  even remotely useful.) Mathematics is done mainly for the
  mathematician's own pleasure!

  #+begin_quote
  Mathematics cannot be defined without acknowledging its most obvious
  feature: namely, that it is interesting --- M. Polanyi [[ref-3][(3)]]
  #+end_quote

* References

1. <<ref-1>>Awodey, Steve. Category Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford Logic
   Guides 52. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
2. <<ref-2>>Gowers, Timothy, June Barrow-Green, and Imre Leader. The
   Princeton Companion to Mathematics. Princeton University
   Press, 2010.
3. <<ref-3>>Wigner, Eugene P. ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of
   Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’. In Mathematics and Science,
   by Ronald E Mickens, 291–306. World
   Scientific, 1990. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814503488_0018.