Axioms
In the book Arithmetices principia, nova methodo exposita, Giuseppe Peano proposed axioms for arithmetic based on his axioms for natural numbers. Peano arithmetic has two axioms for multiplication:
Here S(y) represents the successor of y, or the natural number that follows y. The various properties like associativity can be proved from these and the other axioms of Peano arithmetic including induction. For instance S(0). denoted by 1, is a multiplicative identity because
The axioms for integers typically define them as equivalence classes of ordered pairs of natural numbers. The model is based on treating (x,y) as equivalent to x−y when x and y are treated as integers. Thus both (0,1) and (1,2) are equivalent to −1. The multiplication axiom for integers defined this way is
The rule that −1 × −1 = 1 can then be deduced from
Multiplication is extended in a similar way to rational numbers and then to real numbers.
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Famous quotes containing the word axioms:
“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, “the whole is greater than its part;” “reaction is equal to action;” “the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;” and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““I tell you the solemn truth that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.””
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)