The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Historical Introduction to Cantor's Paradise

A century ago, Georg Cantor demonstrated the possibility of a series of transfinite infinite numbers. His methods, unorthodox for the time, enabled him to derive theorems that established a mathematical reality for a hierarchy of infinities. Cantor's innovation was opposed, and ignored, by the establishment; years later, the value of his work was recognized and appreciated as a landmark in mathematical thought, forming the beginning of set theory and the foundation for most of contemporary ma…