Among the axioms of ZF, perhaps the most attention has been devoted to (6), the axiom of choice, which has a large number of equivalent formulations. It was first introduced by Zermelo, who used it to prove that every set can be well-ordered (i.e., such that each of its nonempty subsets has a least member); it was later discovered, however, that the well-ordering theorem and the axiom of choice are equivalent. Once the axiom was formulated, it became clear that it had been widely used in mathematical reasoning, even by some mathematicians who rejected the explicit version of the axiom ...(100 of 27062 words)