[This] shows, perhaps, why we have tried to put all physical phenomena into the same frame. But that can not pass for a definition of simultaneity, s… - Henri Poincaré

But, one will say, if raw experience can not legitimatize reasoning by recurrence, is it so of experiment aided by induction? We see successively that a theorem is true of the number 1, of the number 2, of the number 3 and so on; the law is evident, we say, and it has the same warranty as every physical law based on observations, whose number is very great but limited. But there is an essential difference. Induction applied to the physical sciences is always uncertain, because it rests on the belief in a general order of the universe, an order outside of us. Mathematical induction, that is, demonstration by recurrence, on the contrary, imposes itself necessarily, because it is only the affirmation of a property of the mind itself.

What is zero? It is the number of elements in the class nil. And what is the class nil? It is the class which contains none.
To define zero as nil and nil as none is really an abuse of the wealth of language, and so [Logicists] introduced an improvement into the definition, ... which means in English: zero is the number of the objects that satisfy a condition that is never fulfilled. But as never means in no case, I do not see that any very great progress has been made.

Toute définition implique un axiome, puisqu'elle affirme l'existence de l'objet défini. La définition ne sera donc justifiée, au point de vue purement logique, que quand on aura démontré qu'elle n'entraîne pas de contradiction, ni dans les termes, ni avec les vérités antérieurement admises.