Abstract

Let's stop for a while to peruse these sentences because every "chiaroscuro", every shade of light deserves to be appreciated till one becomes fully involved in the ambiguous game of their meanings. At first, in a simplicistic way, it had been proposed to consider the continuum as a mathematical logical concept to be conquered through a procedure of decomposition. In some other writings, there circulated the acids of the necessary putrefaction, ready to attack and dissolve the beautiful, vital geometric shapes in the name of rigour, with the certainty that, after making the ephemeral and deceitful visible appearances fade away, the solid bones of mathematics should have come out clear and distinct. Even though he would have been left with such a white and clean skeleton like the ones consumed by the desert's sun, he - at that moment - did not seem to doubt that the continuum ought to be reduced to reason, because he thought integer numbers (either cardinal or ordinal) and those strange enthities named by him Manningfaltigkeiten more rational.