Joel David Hamkins, “How the continuum hypothesis could have been a fundamental axiom,” Journal for the Philosophy of Mathematics (2024), arxiv:2407.02463.
Abstract. I describe a simple historical thought experiment showing how we might have come to view the continuum hypothesis as a fundamental axiom, one necessary for mathematics, indispensable even for calculus.
The JPM will launch in September 2024. Meanwhile, the preprint pdf is available at arxiv.org/pdf/2407.02463.
See also this talk I gave on the topic at the University of Oslo: