Youri Kraskov - The Wonders of Arithmetic from Pierre Simon de Fermat

Pic. 24. Ernst Kummer

Thunder struck in 1847 when at a meeting of members of the French Academy of Sciences Gabriel Lame and Augustin Cauchy reported that their FLT proofs was ready for consideration at the competition. However, when in order to identify the winner, it was already possible to open received from them the sealed envelopes, the German mathematician Ernst Kummer having put all scientists on the sinful earth. In his letter it was reported that the FLT proof on the basis of “complex numbers” is impossible due to the ambiguity of their decomposition into prime factors. 17 17 According to the Basic theorem of arithmetic the decomposition of any natural number into prime factors is always unambiguous, for example, 12=2×2×3 i.e. with other prime factors this number like any other, is impossible to imagine. But for “complex numbers” in the general case this unambiguity is lost for example, 12=(1+√–11)×(1+√–11)=(2+√–8)×(2+√–8) In fact, this means the collapse of science in its very foundations. However, the generally accepted criteria (in the form of axioms) what can be attributed to numbers and what is not, as there was not so still is not.

Here you have got what you want! These very “complex numbers” are not any numbers!!! And one could notice finally, after arithmetic was knocked from under science, it hangs in the air having no solid foundation. And the mistakes of the greats in their consequences are also extreme and they begin to break down a science so much that, instead of a holistic system of knowledge, it creates a bunch of unrelated fragments.

If it so happened, then else in 1847, these very “Complex numbers” had to be solemnly buried with all the honors. But with this matter somehow did not work out at all and the restless souls of the long-dead theories turn out to be so tenacious that they cannot be expelled from textbooks and professorial lectures by any means. They will wander through different books and reference books whose authors will be completely unaware of how much their works depreciates from this useless ballast.

In the mentioned book of Singh is well shown as the ambiguity of decomposing compound integers into prime factors makes it impossible to construct logical conclusions in proofs and it also was said that the unambiguity theorem for such a decomposing for natural numbers was given in “Euclidean Elements”. The specific book and location of the theorem is not specified; therefore, it is rather difficult to find the necessary text, but it really turned out to be so. 18 18 The theorem and its proof are given in “The Euclid's Elements” Book IX, Proposition 14. Without this theorem, the solution of the prevailing set of arithmetic problems becomes either incomplete or impossible at all.

“Euclidean Elements" is a very old book with archaic terminology, in which this extremely important for science theorem was somehow lost and it was simply forgotten about it. The first to discover the loss was Gauss. He formulated it again and gave proof, which contained a surprisingly simple and even childish error, where as an argument used exactly what needs to be proven (see pt. 3.3.1).

But this is not an ordinary theorem, all science holds on it! And what about Euclid? Oh my God! In fact, his proof is the same as that of Gauss i.e. wrong!!! Tell it to someone, so they will not believe! Three giants of science are stumbled on the same place!

Pic. 25. Euclid

Then it turns out that this whole science is fake and now, thanks to Singh’s book and despite all the good intentions of its author, this terrifying FLT, which now even in theory has become completely unprovable, was so furious that like a true monster, in one fell swoop have devalued all the age-old works of scientists! And yet they live in not fabulous, but in the real kingdom of crooked mirrors, what about they themselves don’t know anything.

The fiasco being by academicians Cauchy and Lame did not result in the rejection use of the surrogates of numbers in science especially after Kummer who had crushed their works, found a way to prove FLT (with a little modernization) for any particular case. Before the final victory over the FLT only a last step remained – to obtain a single common proof. Since then 170 years have passed, but nothing was changed. Supported in due time by the Euler's genius "complex numbers" are still presented today as a kind of extension the notion of number. This looks very impressive and solid, but still requires a clear definition of the very notion of number, however just with this deal are very bad.

Students intuitively feeling that they are being tortured in vain by nonsenses about some non-existent numbers, suddenly have a question: “What is a number?” They never come to mind that not a single professor could not answer this question even if he has reread everything that is in mathematics. One of them even could not bear the mocking hints and had published a whole book called “What is a number?” [13, 29]. In it, he has written so many whatnots that students have very well understood – such a question it’s better not to ask.

Pic. 26. Francis Viète

Meanwhile, scientists continued to move science forward, not bothering with such trifles as the essence of the notion of number. So, they created a whole bunch of new algebras taking advantage of the fact that there were no obstacles along the way. But they were not a continuation of what was a real one, the founder of which was the first royal mathematician François Viète served as an advisor to the court of the French king Henry III. But if these new algebras are special, then their terminology and bases are also special.

So, little by little in the science began to form a particular bird language understandable only to the authors of these most innovative developments. It even reached the point where mathematical societies creating a science only for themselves began to appear and in addition to this, the newest numbers appeared out of nothing: “hypercomplex”, “quaternions”, “octonions” etc. But the impression from the new achievements sometimes was spoiled from the same mare tail, 19 19 Soviet mathematician Lev Pontryagin showed these “numbers” do not have the basic property of commutativity i.e. for them ab ≠ ba [34]. Therefore, one and the same such “number” should be represented only in the factorized form, otherwise it will have different value at the same time. When in justification of such creations scientists say that mathematicians have lack some numbers, in reality this may mean they obviously have lacked a mind. which from somewhere appeared again. Getting this tail in the face is not very pleasant, but this is already the costs of a profession. In an effort to get away from such costs, a brilliant way out of the difficulties with the definition the essence the notion of a number was found. Scientists have finally grasped that it needs to be derived from other simpler notions, for example, such as the notion “set”. Everything turned out so simple, a set is that what is a lot. Well, is it not clear? However, it was found out again that one cannot do without empty set and in this case, it would see like nothing, and the question again arises, so what is a set number or not?