Elementary numerosity and measures

Abstract

In this paper we introduce the notion of elementary numerosity as a special function defined on all subsets of a given set X which takes values in a suitable non-Archimedean field, and satisfies the same formal properties of finite cardinality. We investigate the relationships between this notion and the notion of measure. The main result is that every non-atomic finitely additive measure is obtained from a suitable elementary numerosity by simply taking its ratio to a unit. In the last section we give applications to this result.