>>12291822>>12291847I'm curious as well. As far as I know, for a cryptographic algorithm to function, it has to be run on a computer, which (by Church-Turing) can be explicated in terms of mu-recursive functions of natural numbers. And not only are such functions* definable pre-Cantorian set theory, Cantor's epochal paper defined the concept of sets specifically to demonstrate a property of functions between the naturals and the reals**. So those concepts, at least, indisputably predate set theory.
* Technically partial functions, but that can't be a serious obstacle, unless you want to make the extraordinary claim that pre-Cantor mathematicians never conceptualized the reciprocal x |-> 1/x on the reals.
** Specifically, the property of nonsurjectivity (or noninjectivity, depending on which direction the function maps to).
