4.3 Arithmetic[0NN]
We will define the addition operation between natural numbers, formally
\[ ⋅+⋅ : ℕ×ℕ→ℕ \quad ,\quad (h,k)↦ h+k \quad . \]
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This operation is commutative and associative, as shown below.
Note that \(h+0=f_ h(0)=h\) (basis of recursion); also \(0+n=f_ 0(n)=n\) (shows easily by induction).
To prove that it is commutative, we first show that
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At this point we can give a name to \(1=S(0)\) and notice that \(S(n)=n+1\). So from now on we could do without the symbol \(S\).
With similar procedures we show that addition is associative.
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Multiplication is similarly defined.
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Exercises
In the following we will simply write \(nm\) instead of \(n× m\).