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When considered as a set, the elements of are the countable ordinals (including finite ordinals), [1] of which there are uncountably many. Like any ordinal number (in von Neumann's approach), is a well-ordered set, with set membership serving as the order relation.
Also, is the smallest uncountable ordinal (to see that it exists, consider the set of equivalence classes of well-orderings of the natural numbers; each such well-ordering defines a countable ordinal, and is the order type of that set), is the smallest ordinal whose cardinality is greater than , and so on, and is the limit of for natural ...
Every well-ordered set is uniquely order isomorphic to a unique ordinal number, called the order type of the well-ordered set. The well-ordering theorem, which is equivalent to the axiom of choice, states that every set can be well ordered. If a set is well ordered (or even if it merely admits a well-founded relation), the proof technique of ...
Also, is the smallest uncountable ordinal (to see that it exists, consider the set of equivalence classes of well-orderings of the natural numbers: each such well-ordering defines a countable ordinal, and is the order type of that set), is the smallest ordinal whose cardinality is greater than , and so on, and is the limit of the for ...
If admits a totally ordered cofinal subset, then we can find a subset that is well-ordered and cofinal in . Any subset of is also well-ordered. Two cofinal subsets of with minimal cardinality (that is, their cardinality is the cofinality of ) need not be order isomorphic (for example if = +, then both + and {+: <} viewed as subsets of have the countable cardinality of the cofinality of but are ...
A concept in set theory and logic that categorizes well-ordered sets by their structure, such that two sets have the same order type if there is a bijective function between them that preserves order. ordinal 1. An ordinal is the order type of a well-ordered set, usually represented by a von Neumann ordinal, a transitive set well ordered by ∈. 2.
Considering the natural numbers as a subset of the real numbers, and assuming that we know already that the real numbers are complete (again, either as an axiom or a theorem about the real number system), i.e., every bounded (from below) set has an infimum, then also every set of natural numbers has an infimum, say .
As every ordinal number is defined by a set of smaller ordinal numbers, the well-ordered set Ω of all ordinal numbers (if it exists) fits the definition and is itself an ordinal. On the other hand, no ordinal number can contain itself, so Ω cannot be an ordinal. Therefore, the set of all ordinal numbers cannot exist.