From time to time, in Math textbook, I encounter the statement using whenever, e.g. on page 12 of Horst Herrlich's Axiom of Choice "A has an upper bound in X whenever each pair of elements of A has an upper bound in A."
In my mind, the assignment of truth value of a particular mathematical proposition is either a prior belief at the metalevel of reasoning, or a logical consequence of some other more “basic” axioms, both of which are irrelevant to time, which could be specified or not.
Why not replace "whenever" by "if" and its timeless synonyms, say, "provided"?
No comments:
Post a Comment