This will be a talk for the Logic and Philosophy of Science Colloquium at the University of California at Irvine, 15 March 2024.
![](https://jdh.hamkins.org/wp-content/uploads/DALL·E-2024-02-12-14.14.24-Water-color-painting-of-the-big-translucent-wave-arriving-on-the-sandy-beach-on-a-warm-day.png)
Abstract. With a simple historical thought experiment, I should like to describe how we might easily have come to view the continuum hypothesis as a fundamental axiom, one necessary for mathematics, indispensable even for calculus.
The paper is now available at How the continuum hypothesis could have been a fundamental axiom.