There seems to be two common definitions of neighborhoods of a point- an open set containing the point, or an set containing an open set which itself contains that point. Why don't we just use the former definition, it seems so much simpler? What do we gain from the latter?
I am a Physics undergrad, and just started studying Topology. How do you define neighborhood and open set in Topology.Wikipedia gives a circular definition.   An  is defined as follows.      In topology, a set  is called an open set if it is a neighborhood of every point    While a  is defined as follows:     If $X$ is a topological space and $p$ is a point in $X$, a neighbourhood of $p$ is a subset $V$ of $X$, which includes an open set $U$ containing $p$   which itself contains the term open set.  How do you define it exactly?
I am a Physics undergrad, and just started studying Topology. How do you define neighborhood and open set in Topology.Wikipedia gives a circular definition.   An  is defined as follows.      In topology, a set  is called an open set if it is a neighborhood of every point    While a  is defined as follows:     If $X$ is a topological space and $p$ is a point in $X$, a neighbourhood of $p$ is a subset $V$ of $X$, which includes an open set $U$ containing $p$   which itself contains the term open set.  How do you define it exactly?