Question about number types

Was there at any point explicit rejection of have a mathematical real  
number datatype (possibly augmented with some constants such as INF, - 
INF) from which the rest of the numeric types were defined by  
restriction?

We have a discussion going in the OWL working group, part of which is  
about the desirability of comparing a float to an integer. If they  
are disjoint, then that doesn't seem possible. However, it seems well  
defined to ask whether "2.1"^^xsd:float > "2"^^xsd:int

Thanks,
Alan