Cantor, Cohen, Set Theory

(Me again. I’m actually amazed that the Derrida set off so rubust a thread; I’ll have to read through it carefully later on and think about it; it means something somehow; I mean in general.)

Anyways, I have long wanted to understand the revolution in mathemateics that happened in the 20th c. with Cantor, Cohen, and Godel, others. Now, I just barely passed calculus in high school; but just because I find it both so fascinating and so foreign to my way of thinking (I think in words; they, in numbers–how’s that possible?); and just because I believe it when I read here and there that mathematics has been changed forever and want a foggy idea of how…

I had a history of math in my hands at Eslite one time but put it back on the table…such books as I want do exist…

Does anyone know of or can recommend a good secondary source for set theory, Cantor, et al. Along the lines of “Set Theory for Dummies”…or, where at Page One, Eslite–what section, I might one day stumble across such a book. Or, a ‘must have’ book’ that I could order…

Many thanks again

I’d start by reading this ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm

Then search for what you want on eMule. See slyck.com for p2p tutorials.

I will do that, thanks…

Wikipedia is quite good for math related topics. I suppose the math gurus have too much time to kill, so there are lots of links. If you took all the possible links, I believe you can learn a lot. Try en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set

Here’s a quick summary: Set theory in the normal sense is easy, obvious, useful and broken. Since finding out that it is broken, mathematicians have created a variety of other systems which are difficult, obscure, useless and correct. The whole thing is very silly.