This paper presents a new representation of natural numbers and discusses its consequences for computability and computational complexity. The paper argues that the introduction of the first Peano axiom in the traditional definition of natural numbers is not essential. It claims that natural numbers remain usable in traditional ways without assuming the existence of at least one natural number. However, the uncertainty about the existence of natural numbers translates into ev...

This paper presents an algorithmic method that, given a positive integer $j$, generates the $j$-th convergence stair containing all natural numbers from where the Collatz conjecture holds by exactly $j$ applications of the Collatz function. To this end, we present a novel formulation of the Collatz conjecture as a concurrent program, and provide the general case specification of the $j$-th convergence stair for any $j > 0$. The proposed specifications provide a layered and li...

This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to an error.

There have been many theories about the paradoxes of numbers, but this is far and away more paradoxical than most. In this paper we will present the Zoli Numbers which have some innovative characteristics. The basic concept of these numbers is that they don't follow strictly any Mathematical rule. They are called Zoli from the names of Zotos and Litke. We are going to see some examples with the Zoli Programming Language and reveal the connection with other mathematical topics...

In the 16th century, Simon Stevin initiated a modern approach to decimal representation of measuring numbers, marking a transition from the discrete arithmetic practised by the Greeks to the arithmetic of the continuum taken for granted today. However, how to perform arithmetic directly on infinite decimals remains a long-standing problem, which has seen the popular degeometrisation of real numbers since the first constructions were published in around 1872. Our article is de...

A beautiful theorem of Zeckendorf states that every positive integer can be uniquely decomposed as a sum of non-consecutive Fibonacci numbers $\{F_n\}$, where $F_1 = 1$, $F_2 = 2$ and $F_{n+1} = F_n + F_{n-1}$. For general recurrences $\{G_n\}$ with non-negative coefficients, there is a notion of a legal decomposition which again leads to a unique representation, and the number of summands in the representations of uniformly randomly chosen $m \in [G_n, G_{n+1})$ converges to...

There is a problem with the foundations of classical mathematics, and potentially even with the foundations of computer science, that mathematicians have by-and-large ignored. This essay is a call for practicing mathematicians who have been sleep-walking in their infinitary mathematical paradise to take heed. Much of mathematics relies upon either (i) the "existence'" of objects that contain an infinite number of elements, (ii) our ability, "in theory", to compute with an arb...

There are many scientific problems generated by the multiple and conflicting alternative definitions of linguistic recursion and human recursive processing that exist in the literature. The purpose of this article is to make available to the linguistic community the standard mathematical definition of recursion and to apply it to discuss linguistic recursion. As a byproduct, we obtain an insight into certain "soft universals" of human languages, which are related to cognitive...

Continuing earlier work of the first author with U. Berger, K. Miyamoto and H. Tsuiki, it is shown how a division algorithm for real numbers given as a stream of signed digits can be extracted from an appropriate formal proof. The property of being a real number represented as a stream is formulated by means of coinductively defined predicates, and formal proofs involve coinduction. The proof assistant Minlog is used to generate the formal proofs and extract their computation...

Subtraction is a powerful technique for creating new bijections from old. Let's reinvent it! While we're at it, let's reinvent division as well.