Skip to main content
Post Made Community Wiki
Source Link
Noah Schweber
  • 20.5k
  • 10
  • 110
  • 331

Lindstrom's theorem: if $L$ is a regular logic which is compact, has the Lowenheim-Skolem property, and extends first-order logic, then $L$ is (equivalent to) first-order logic. Compactness and the Lowenheim-Skolem property are both very important notions, which are (in abstract model theory) often studied independently of each other; regularity and extending first-order logic are slightly more minor, but I still think they are substantial enough to count as individual hypotheses. ("Regular" means that given a formula $\phi$ and a predicate symbol $U$, there is a single formula $\phi^U$ such that for all structures $M$ in a language containing $U$ and all symbols used in $\phi$, we have $M\models\phi^U\iff M^U\models\phi$.)