Generalized Archimedean Groups 23
GENERALIZEDARCHIMEDEAN GROUPS BY ELIAS ZAKON Introduction. In a previous paper [3], the concept of archimedean group was generalized so as to obtain a larger class of groups that were referred to as regularly ordered. As it was shown in [3], these groups, unlike the archimedean ones, admit a formalization in the lower predicate calculus (LPC) of formal logic; yet they cannot be distinguished from archimedean groups by any properties formalizable in the LPC. Thus they can serve as an LPC-substitute for archimedean groups. This result was, however, based on several theorems stated without proof. It is our aim now to supply the proofs of these theorems. Another objective of this paper consists in giving a unified algebraic approach to regularly ordered groups, as a counterpart to the metamathematical study presented in [3]. Throughout this paper, the term "ordered group" stands for "totally ordered (and, hence, torsion-free) additive abelian group other than {O}." Such a group, A, is said to be discretely or densely ordered according as it does, or does not, contain a smallest positive element (called its unit, 1). A subset SÇ.A is called an interval if the relations a <x <b, a, bQS, xQA always imply xQS. An interval is referred to as infinite if the number of its elements is infinite. Whereas in [3] the concept of a regularly ordered group was de- fined separately for discretely and densely ordered groups, we now give a unified definition; its equivalence with that given in [3] will be proved later. 0.1. Definition. An ordered group A is said to be regularly ordered, with respect to an integer n>0 (briefly, "n-regular"), ii every infinite interval of A contains at least one (and, hence, infinitely many) elements divisible by «.(') If this holds for every n, we simply say that A is regularly ordered.
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