The structure of hereditarily small sets is transitive. If , all its sets are hereditarily finite, so it cannot satisfy Infinity. Therefore the assumed model has .
Let be a cardinal. The ordinal belongs to , and every actual subset of also belongs to : its transitive closure has size at most . The Power set axiom inside therefore produces the actual , since all subsets relevant to the internal definition are present. This power set itself belongs to , so
Thus is a strong limit. Its regularity was assumed, and we have proved uncountability. Hence is strongly inaccessible.
The Von Neumann hierarchy and the constructible hierarchy are defined by transfinite recursion:
The union clauses apply to nonzero limit ordinals. The definable power set consists of subsets definable over by a first-order formula with finitely many parameters from . Definability over that structure is essential; it is not unrestricted definability in the ambient universe. The full constructible universe is .
For an infinite cardinal number , the hereditarily small set collection is
where is transitive closure. Using instead gives the same size criterion for infinite . This bounds the whole membership ancestry, not just .
The hereditarily small set structure fails the Axiom of power set at . Every subset of belongs to , but their full power set has cardinality at least by the Cantor theorem, so cannot itself be hereditarily smaller than .