Axiom of foundation

In mathematics, the axiom of regularity (also known as the axiom of foundation) is an axiom of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory that states that every non-empty set A contains an element that is disjoint from A. In first-order logic, the axiom reads:

The axiom implies that no set is an element of itself, and that there is no infinite sequence (a_n) such that a_i+1 is an element of a_i for all i. With the axiom of dependent choice (which is a weakened form of the axiom of choice), this result can be reversed: if there are no such infinite sequences, then the axiom of regularity is true. Hence, the axiom of regularity is equivalent, given the axiom of dependent choice, to the alternative axiom that there are no downward infinite membership chains.

The axiom of regularity was introduced by von Neumann (1925); it was adopted in a formulation closer to the one found in contemporary textbooks by Zermelo (1930). Virtually all results in the branches of mathematics based on set theory hold even in the absence of regularity; see chapter 3 of Kunen (1980). However, regularity makes some properties of ordinals easier to prove; and it not only allows induction to be done on well-ordered sets but also on proper classes that are well-founded relational structures such as the lexicographical ordering on ${\displaystyle \{(n,\alpha )\vert n\in \omega \land \alpha {\text{ is an ordinal }}\}\,.}$

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