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From: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math
Subject: Peano vs Dedekind
Message-ID: <2035@water.waterloo.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 89 15:55:21 GMT
Reply-To: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 23

In article <1088@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes
a lengthy article in which he makes many points about education and
other things.  But, in the middle of it, he has this:

>The Peano postulates (really due to Dedekind) contain the essence of the
>structure of the integers.     ... [ much more deleted ]

Really?

I thought that the Peano Postulates pertained to counting numbers
and not to integers, and that they really had been done by Peano.

Can anybody confirm, deny, or supply a reference for this?

(I think that Dedekind *did* contribute to the theory of real numbers
through the notion that we call "Dedekind Cut".  But again this is
neither the counting numbers nor the integers.)

-- 
    L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
	ljdickey@WATDCS.UWaterloo.ca	ljdickey@water.BITNET
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	ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu