Reals by Abstraction. An Inquiry about Epistemic Economy in Mathematics: Volume II

This second of a two-volume book prolongs the inquiry of volume 1 by considering other examples apt to better illustrate the ideal of epistemic economy in mathematical recasting. The new examples are drawn from second-order definitions of real numbers and allow the comparison of three different approaches to the definition of these numbers: by domain extension, as ratios of magnitudes, and as bici...