Analytic Proof

Analytic Proof

In mathematical analysis, an analytical proof is a proof of a theorem in analysis that only makes use of methods from analysis, and which does not make use of results from geometry. 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 proof of the theorem which was free from intuitions concerning lines crossing each other at a point and so he felt happy calling 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 analytical 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.

Read more about Analytic Proof:  Structural Proof Theory

Famous quotes containing the words analytic and/or proof:

    “You, that have not lived in thought but deed,
    Can have the purity of a natural force,
    But I, whose virtues are the definitions
    Of the analytic mind, can neither close
    The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.”
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)