Word.ws English Dictionary

Burali-Forti paradox

Burali-Forti paradox proper noun: the paradox that supposing the existence of a set of all ordinal numbers leads to a contradiction; construed as meaning that it is not a properly defined set.

Proper noun

the Burali-Forti paradox

  1. The paradox that supposing the existence of a set of all ordinal numbers leads to a contradiction; construed as meaning that it is not a properly defined set.
    • Like them, Mirimanoff concentrates on the Burali-Forti paradox, and like Russell's analysis before, Mirimanoff shows how. in terms of size, the Burali-Forti paradox is basic and that if we solve this the other paradoxes will be solved too.1984, Michael Hallett, Cantorian Set Theory and Limitation of Size, Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1986, Paperback, page 186
    • 1994 [Routledge], Ivor Grattan-Guinness (editor), Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 1, 2003, Johns Hopkins University Press, Paperback, page 632,
      In the first place, Berry rejected Russell's solution to the Burali-Forti paradox, claiming that...

Forms of Burali-Forti paradox

alternative formBurali-Forti's paradox

Origin of Burali-Forti paradox

Named after Cesare Burali-Forti, who in 1897 published a paper proving a theorem which, unknown to him, contradicted a previously proved result by Georg Cantor.

Questions about Burali-Forti paradox

What does Burali-Forti paradox mean?
Burali-Forti paradox means the paradox that supposing the existence of a set of all ordinal numbers leads to a contradiction; construed as meaning that it is not a properly defined set.
What part of speech is Burali-Forti paradox?
Burali-Forti paradox is a proper noun.

Words near Burali-Forti paradox in the dictionary

  1. Buragwonduc
  2. burak
  3. buraku
  4. burakumin
  5. burakumins
  6. Burali-Forti paradox
  7. Burali-Forti's paradox
  8. buran
  9. burandanga
  10. Burang
  11. burangaite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Burali-Forti paradox (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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