I’ve been given the chance to teach the course in axiomatic set theory in Jerusalem this semester. Today I gave my first lecture as a teacher. It went fine, I even covered more than I expected to, which is good, I guess. I am also preparing lecture notes, which I will probably post here when the semester ends. These predicated on some rudimentary understanding in logic and basic set theory, so there might be holes there to people unfamiliar with the basic course (at least the one that I gave with Azriel Levy for the past three years).

Yesterday, however, I spent most of my day thinking about how we—as a collective of set theorists—teach axiomatic set theory. About that usual course: axioms, ordinals, induction, well-founded sets, reflection, $V=L$ and the consistency of $\GCH$ and $\AC$, some basic combinatorics (clubs, Fodor’s lemma, maybe Solovay or even Silver’s theorem). Up to some rudimentary permutation.

Is this the right way to approach axiomatic set theory? This path is not easy to justify. Sure, you can justify things like well-founded sets by arguing that this is how we justify the Axiom of Foundation. And you could argue that this is a rudimentary foray into inner model theory, and that this is important. And you are absolutely right. But on the other hand, I feel that engaging the students should involve more set theory which is “interactive”. Where you obtain actual results, rather than just consistency of axioms, especially axioms which you have very little motivation towards.

I mean, look at how we teach (or learn) about algebraic structures. We don’t spend all semester just with the axioms of groups, or rings, proving things. We also see a lot of examples, and a lot of ways where these structures interact with mathematics. Set theory doesn’t have this luxury, we don’t have natural models to work with and their interactions with mathematics is meta-theoretical, rather than direct as it is the case with groups and rings.

So set theory, in essence, should be taught in a mixture of motivating examples and consistency proofs. I am taking this from my advisor, who is a wonderful teacher, as anyone who ever sat in his lectures could witness. A couple of years ago, Menachem gave a course about stationary tower forcing. In most texts about stationary tower forcing, you spend the first several dozen pages in technical concepts like Completely Jonsson cardinals, and so on. But Menachem started with the motivation: universally Baire sets, and their properties. Once you understand those, stationary tower forcing becomes much easier to digest, because it is with purpose. Last year, and next semester, Menachem is talking about inner models, and again a lot of motivation is given into fine structural considerations, mainly square’ish ones for the basic fine structure of $L$, but also through mice we get a good intuition as to what $K^{DJ}$ is supposed to be.

Right. So the basic axiomatic set theory course. What can we do about that? Well, my initial approach is to take $\ZF$ for starters. Motivate Foundation by talking about induction, and then prove that Foundation adds no new contradictions. After that, we’ll see exactly, but the next step is again motivation for either choice or Reflection principles. In either case, I feel that having motivation interspersed with consistency proofs is key here.

So now, let me ask you, my fellow set theorists, who have taught courses in axiomatic set theory. What is your experience on the matter? What is your take on my approach? This is my first time doing this, and I will definitely be reporting again during the semester and afterwards. But I also want to hear what you have to say on the matter. I will leave the comments open, but also feel free to contact me over email.