[FOM] Infinity of primes in Euclid
Mark Bridger
mark_bridger at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 15 09:33:12 EST 2005
Euclid does NOT say that there are infinitely many primes. Rather, he proves that for any number of primes there must be another. The reference is: Book IX, Proposition 20: "Prime numbers are more than any assigned multitude of prime numbers." ("The History of Mathematics - A Reader" ed. J. Fauvel, J. Gray.)
This is an example of Aristotle's "Potential Infinity" as opposed to a "Completed Infinity."
M. Bridger
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Shopping
Find Great Deals on Holiday Gifts at Yahoo! Shopping
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/fom/attachments/20051215/446b59d3/attachment.html
More information about the FOM
mailing list