Portal:Set theory/Intro
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of objects can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics. The modern study of set theory was initiated by Cantor and Dedekind in the 1870s. After the discovery of paradoxes in informal set theory, numerous axiom systems were proposed in the early twentieth century, of which the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms, with the axiom of choice, are the most well known.
Set theory, formalized using first-order logic, is the most common foundational system for mathematics. The language of set theory is used in the definitions of nearly all mathematical objects, such as functions, and concepts of set theory are integrated throughout the mathematics curriculum. Elementary facts about sets and set membership can be introduced in primary school, along with Venn diagrams, to study collections of commonplace physical objects.
