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Characterizing the continuous functionals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
Extract
One of the objectives of mathematics is to construct suitable models for practical or theoretical phenomena and to explore the mathematical richness of such models. This enables other scientists to obtain a better understanding of such phenomena. As an example we will mention the real line and related structures. The line can be used profitably in the study of discrete phenomena like population growth, chemical reactions, etc.
Today's version of the real line is a topological completion of the rational numbers. This is so because then mathematicians have been able to work out a powerful analysis of the line. By using the real line to construct models for finitary phenomena we are more able to study those phenomena than we would have been sticking only to true-to-nature but finite structures.
So we may say that the line is a mathematical model for certain finite structures. This motivates us to seek natural models for other types of finite structures, and it is natural to look for models that in some sense are complete.
In this paper our starting point will be finite systems of finite operators. For the sake of simplicity we assume that they all are operators of one variable and that all the values are natural numbers. There is a natural extension of the systems such that they accept several variables and give finite operators as values, but the notational complexity will then obscure the idea of the construction.
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- Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 1983
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