Argument
Analytic proof
Overview
In mathematics, an analytic proof is a proof of a theorem in analysis that only makes use of methods from analysis, and that does not predominantly make use of algebraic or geometrical methods. The term was first used by Bernard Bolzano, who first provided a non-analytic proof of his intermediate value theorem and then, several years later provided a proof of the theorem that was free from intuitions concerning lines crossing each other at a point, and so he felt happy calling it analytic (Bolzano 1817).
Bolzano's philosophical work encouraged a more abstract reading of when a demonstration could be regarded as analytic, where a proof is analytic if it does not go beyond its subject matter (Sebastik 2007). In proof theory, an analytic proof has come to mean a proof whose structure is simple in a special way, due to conditions on the kind of inferences that ensure none of them go beyond what is contained in the assumptions and what is demonstrated.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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There are nevertheless, in mathematics, some examples of so-called Induction, in which the conclusion does bear the appearance of a generalization grounded on some of the particular cases included in it. A mathematician, when he has calculated a sufficient number of the terms of an algebraical or arithmetical series to have ascertained what is called the _law_ of the series, does not hesitate to fill up any number…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Analytic proof is.
Any such select set is called the set of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds. The reasoning is nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Analytic proof is.
(2) If two magnitudes are equal to a third they are equal to one another; this statement is, as Hegel has shown, a conclusion, upon the correctness of which all logic depends, and which is demonstrated therefore outside of pure mathematics. The remaining axioms with regard to equality and inequality are merely logical extensions of this conclusion. Such barren statements are not enticing either in mathematics or…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
States what Analytic proof is.
Related ideas
- Proof theory
- Mathematics
- Geometry
- Rule of inference
- Sequent calculus
- Bernard Bolzano
- Mathematical analysis
- Intermediate value theorem
Place in the tradition
Part of Linear logic.