i learned that the reals were composed of equivalence classes of cauchy sequences (sequences where the absolute distance between consecutive entries can be said to converge). my prof vaughan jones (very kind man) was very particular that the sequences themselves cannot be said to converge to a value in any meaningful sense, hence the "cauchy sequence" approach.
we [turning to the audience now] were told that formalizing and codifying the real numbers was one of the greatest mathematical achievements of the early 20th century. what if it wasn't?
what if the reals were taken from mathematicians during that symphony of conquest in the 1940s, led by cruel men who could not accept albert einstein seeing the next dimension beyond euclid?
