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Exercise 7.1.3
For any set , there is a mapping of onto . [Hint: Define the ordinal isomorphic to , if is a well-ordering of its field; otherwise.]
Answers
Proof. Suppose that is equipotent to but that . Clearly if then is equipotent to (since is), which contradicts the definition of the Hartogs number. On the other hand if then let be a bijection from to . Then, since we have that and since ordinals are transitive. It then follows that is a bijection from to . Hence again is equipotent to a subset of , contradicting the definition of the Hartogs number. So it has to be that as desired. □
Main Problem.
Proof. We define a function . So for any clearly so that is a relation on . If is a well-ordering of some then by Theorem 6.3.1 there is a unique ordinal such that is isomorphic to . We then set
First we show that really is in for any . So for any such , if is not a well-ordering of some then clearly . Then, since clearly and is equipotent to 0, it follows that by Lemma 1. Hence . On the other hand if is a well-ordering of some then let be the ordinal isomorphic to so that . Since this means that is equipotent to , it again follows from Lemma 1 that so that .
To show that is surjective consider any so that . Since by definition is the least ordinal that is not equipotent to a subset of it follows that has to be equipotent to an . Then let be the well-ordering of such that is isomorphic to . Clearly is a relation on and therefore also a relation on since . Thus so that . Clearly also and since was arbitrary this shows that is surjective. □
Note that this does not mean that unless the Axiom of Choice is employed.