A Topological Representation of Semantics of First-order Logic and Its Application as a Method in Model Theory

Abstract

Various topological concepts are often involved in the research of mathematical logic, and almost all of these concepts can be regarded as developing from the Stone representation theorem. In the Stone representation theorem, a Boolean algebra is represented as the algebra of the clopen sets of a Stone space. And based on this, a natural connection is established between the structure of Stone space and the semantics of propositional logic. In other words, models of a propositional theory are represented as points in a Stone space. This enables us to use the concepts of topology to describe many facts in logic. In this paper, we do the same thing for the first-order logic. That is, we organize the basic objects of semantics of first-order logic, such as theories, models, elementary embeddings, and so on, into a kind of topological structure defined abstractly. To be precise, this kind of structure is a kind of enriched-topological space which we call cylindric space in this paper. Furthermore, based on this topological representation of semantics of first-order logic, we systematically introduce a method of point-set topology into the research of model theory. We demonstrate the great advantages of this topological method with an example and provide a general discussion of its features, advantages, and connection to the type space.