The Continuum

"Few mathematical structures have undergone as many revlSlons or have been presented in as many guises as the real numbers. Every generation re-examines the reals in the light of its values and mathematical objectives." This citation is said to be due to Gian-Carlo Rota, and in this book its correctness again is affirmed. Here I propose to investigate the structure of the mathematical continuum by undertaking a rather unconventional access to the real numbers: the intuitionistic one. The traces