[FOM] CH and mathematics

[Timothy Y. Chow]

Bill Taylor wrote:

> Physics has shown not the *slightest* sign of needing CH or anything
> beyond continuum cardinality, and there is nothing on the horizon.

Since Joe Shipman is involved in this discussion, I probably don't need to 
jump in with this, but physicists Itamar Pitowsky and Stanley Gudder have 
used the continuum hypothesis to construct a "local hidden-variables" 
theory.

S. Gudder, Probability manifolds, J. Math. Phys. 25 (1984), 2397-2401.

I. Pitowsky, Deterministic models of spin and statistics, Phys. Rev. D 27 
(1983), 2316-2326.

Shipman showed that CH, or something like it, is needed for these 
theories; ZFC isn't enough.

J. Shipman, Cardinal conditions for strong Fubini theorems, Trans. Amer. 
Math. Soc. 321 (1990), 465-481.

Tim