HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Infinity is that which is boundless, endless, or larger than any
natural number In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country"). Numbers used for counting are called '' cardinal ...
. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol . Since the time of the
ancient Greeks Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions among philosophers. In the 17th century, with the introduction of the infinity symbol and the infinitesimal calculus, mathematicians began to work with infinite series and what some mathematicians (including l'Hôpital and Bernoulli) regarded as infinitely small quantities, but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes. As mathematicians struggled with the foundation of calculus, it remained unclear whether infinity could be considered as a number or magnitude and, if so, how this could be done. At the end of the 19th century,
Georg Cantor Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor ( , ;  – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. He played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance o ...
enlarged the mathematical study of infinity by studying infinite sets and infinite numbers, showing that they can be of various sizes. For example, if a line is viewed as the set of all of its points, their infinite number (i.e., the cardinality of the line) is larger than the number of
integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign ( −1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the languag ...
s. In this usage, infinity is a mathematical concept, and infinite mathematical objects can be studied, manipulated, and used just like any other mathematical object. The mathematical concept of infinity refines and extends the old philosophical concept, in particular by introducing infinitely many different sizes of infinite sets. Among the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, on which most of modern mathematics can be developed, is the axiom of infinity, which guarantees the existence of infinite sets. The mathematical concept of infinity and the manipulation of infinite sets are used everywhere in mathematics, even in areas such as
combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...
that may seem to have nothing to do with them. For example, Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem implicitly relies on the existence of very large infinite sets for solving a long-standing problem that is stated in terms of elementary arithmetic. In
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
and
cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
, whether the Universe is spatially infinite is an open question.


History

Ancient cultures had various ideas about the nature of infinity. The ancient Indians and the
Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and, to a lesser extent, ot ...
did not define infinity in precise formalism as does modern mathematics, and instead approached infinity as a philosophical concept.


Early Greek

The earliest recorded idea of infinity in Greece may be that of Anaximander (c. 610 – c. 546 BC) a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He used the word ''apeiron'', which means "unbounded", "indefinite", and perhaps can be translated as "infinite". Aristotle (350 BC) distinguished ''potential infinity'' from '' actual infinity'', which he regarded as impossible due to the various paradoxes it seemed to produce. It has been argued that, in line with this view, the
Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
Greeks had a "horror of the infinite" which would, for example, explain why
Euclid Euclid (; grc-gre, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of ...
(c. 300 BC) did not say that there are an infinity of primes but rather "Prime numbers are more than any assigned multitude of prime numbers." It has also been maintained, that, in proving the infinitude of the prime numbers, Euclid "was the first to overcome the horror of the infinite". There is a similar controversy concerning Euclid's parallel postulate, sometimes translated: Other translators, however, prefer the translation "the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely ...", thus avoiding the implication that Euclid was comfortable with the notion of infinity. Finally, it has been maintained that a reflection on infinity, far from eliciting a "horror of the infinite", underlay all of early Greek philosophy and that Aristotle's "potential infinity" is an aberration from the general trend of this period.


Zeno: Achilles and the tortoise

Zeno of Elea ( 495 –  430 BC) did not advance any views concerning the infinite. Nevertheless, his paradoxes, especially "Achilles and the Tortoise", were important contributions in that they made clear the inadequacy of popular conceptions. The paradoxes were described by
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
as "immeasurably subtle and profound".
Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's '' Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Pe ...
races a tortoise, giving the latter a head start. *Step #1: Achilles runs to the tortoise's starting point while the tortoise walks forward. *Step #2: Achilles advances to where the tortoise was at the end of Step #1 while the tortoise goes yet further. *Step #3: Achilles advances to where the tortoise was at the end of Step #2 while the tortoise goes yet further. *Step #4: Achilles advances to where the tortoise was at the end of Step #3 while the tortoise goes yet further. Etc. Apparently, Achilles never overtakes the tortoise, since however many steps he completes, the tortoise remains ahead of him. Zeno was not attempting to make a point about infinity. As a member of the Eleatics school which regarded motion as an illusion, he saw it as a mistake to suppose that Achilles could run at all. Subsequent thinkers, finding this solution unacceptable, struggled for over two millennia to find other weaknesses in the argument. Finally, in 1821, Augustin-Louis Cauchy provided both a satisfactory definition of a limit and a proof that, for , a+ax+ax^2+ax^3+ax^4+ax^5+\cdots=\frac. Suppose that Achilles is running at 10 meters per second, the tortoise is walking at 0.1 meters per second, and the latter has a 100-meter head start. The duration of the chase fits Cauchy's pattern with and . Achilles does overtake the tortoise; it takes him 10+0.1+0.001+0.00001+\cdots=\frac = \frac =10.10101\ldots\text.


Early Indian

The Jain mathematical text Surya Prajnapti (c. 4th–3rd century BCE) classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable, and infinite. Each of these was further subdivided into three orders: * Enumerable: lowest, intermediate, and highest * Innumerable: nearly innumerable, truly innumerable, and innumerably innumerable * Infinite: nearly infinite, truly infinite, infinitely infinite


17th century

In the 17th century, European mathematicians started using infinite numbers and infinite expressions in a systematic fashion. In 1655, John Wallis first used the notation \infty for such a number in his ''De sectionibus conicis'', and exploited it in area calculations by dividing the region into infinitesimal strips of width on the order of \tfrac. But in ''Arithmetica infinitorum'' (also in 1655), he indicates infinite series, infinite products and infinite continued fractions by writing down a few terms or factors and then appending "&c.", as in "1, 6, 12, 18, 24, &c." In 1699,
Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, Theology, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosophy, natural philosopher"), widely ...
wrote about equations with an infinite number of terms in his work ''
De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas ''De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas'' (or ''On analysis by infinite series'', ''On Analysis by Equations with an infinite number of terms'', or ''On the Analysis by means of equations of an infinite number of terms'') is a m ...
''.


Mathematics

Hermann Weyl opened a mathematico-philosophic address given in 1930 with:


Symbol

The infinity symbol \infty (sometimes called the
lemniscate In algebraic geometry, a lemniscate is any of several figure-eight or -shaped curves. The word comes from the Latin "''lēmniscātus''" meaning "decorated with ribbons", from the Greek λημνίσκος meaning "ribbons",. or which alternative ...
) is a mathematical symbol representing the concept of infinity. The symbol is encoded in
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
at and in
LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
as \infty. It was introduced in 1655 by John Wallis, and since its introduction, it has also been used outside mathematics in modern mysticism and literary
symbology A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different co ...
.


Calculus

Gottfried Leibniz, one of the co-inventors of infinitesimal calculus, speculated widely about infinite numbers and their use in mathematics. To Leibniz, both infinitesimals and infinite quantities were ideal entities, not of the same nature as appreciable quantities, but enjoying the same properties in accordance with the Law of continuity.


Real analysis

In real analysis, the symbol \infty, called "infinity", is used to denote an unbounded
limit Limit or Limits may refer to: Arts and media * ''Limit'' (manga), a manga by Keiko Suenobu * ''Limit'' (film), a South Korean film * Limit (music), a way to characterize harmony * "Limit" (song), a 2016 single by Luna Sea * "Limits", a 2019 ...
. The notation x \rightarrow \infty means that ''x'' increases without bound, and x \to -\infty means that ''x'' decreases without bound. For example, if f(t)\ge 0 for every ''t'', then * \int_^ f(t)\, dt = \infty means that f(t) does not bound a finite area from a to b. * \int_^ f(t)\, dt = \infty means that the area under f(t) is infinite. * \int_^ f(t)\, dt = a means that the total area under f(t) is finite, and is equal to a. Infinity can also be used to describe infinite series, as follows: * \sum_^ f(i) = a means that the sum of the infinite series converges to some real value a. * \sum_^ f(i) = \infty means that the sum of the infinite series properly diverges to infinity, in the sense that the partial sums increase without bound. In addition to defining a limit, infinity can be also used as a value in the extended real number system. Points labeled +\infty and -\infty can be added to the
topological space In mathematics, a topological space is, roughly speaking, a geometrical space in which closeness is defined but cannot necessarily be measured by a numeric distance. More specifically, a topological space is a set whose elements are called poin ...
of the real numbers, producing the two-point compactification of the real numbers. Adding algebraic properties to this gives us the extended real numbers. We can also treat +\infty and -\infty as the same, leading to the one-point compactification of the real numbers, which is the
real projective line In geometry, a real projective line is a projective line over the real numbers. It is an extension of the usual concept of a line that has been historically introduced to solve a problem set by visual perspective: two parallel lines do not int ...
. Projective geometry also refers to a line at infinity in plane geometry, a
plane at infinity In projective geometry, a plane at infinity is the hyperplane at infinity of a three dimensional projective space or to any plane contained in the hyperplane at infinity of any projective space of higher dimension. This article will be concerned ...
in three-dimensional space, and a hyperplane at infinity for general dimensions, each consisting of points at infinity.


Complex analysis

In complex analysis the symbol \infty, called "infinity", denotes an unsigned infinite
limit Limit or Limits may refer to: Arts and media * ''Limit'' (manga), a manga by Keiko Suenobu * ''Limit'' (film), a South Korean film * Limit (music), a way to characterize harmony * "Limit" (song), a 2016 single by Luna Sea * "Limits", a 2019 ...
. x \rightarrow \infty means that the magnitude , x, of ''x'' grows beyond any assigned value. A point labeled \infty can be added to the complex plane as a
topological space In mathematics, a topological space is, roughly speaking, a geometrical space in which closeness is defined but cannot necessarily be measured by a numeric distance. More specifically, a topological space is a set whose elements are called poin ...
giving the one-point compactification of the complex plane. When this is done, the resulting space is a one-dimensional complex manifold, or
Riemann surface In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a connected one-dimensional complex manifold. These surfaces were first studied by and are named after Bernhard Riemann. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed ver ...
, called the extended complex plane or the
Riemann sphere In mathematics, the Riemann sphere, named after Bernhard Riemann, is a model of the extended complex plane: the complex plane plus one point at infinity. This extended plane represents the extended complex numbers, that is, the complex numbers ...
. Arithmetic operations similar to those given above for the extended real numbers can also be defined, though there is no distinction in the signs (which leads to the one exception that infinity cannot be added to itself). On the other hand, this kind of infinity enables division by zero, namely z/0 = \infty for any nonzero complex number ''z''. In this context, it is often useful to consider meromorphic functions as maps into the Riemann sphere taking the value of \infty at the poles. The domain of a complex-valued function may be extended to include the point at infinity as well. One important example of such functions is the group of Möbius transformations (see Möbius transformation § Overview).


Nonstandard analysis

The original formulation of infinitesimal calculus by
Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, Theology, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosophy, natural philosopher"), widely ...
and Gottfried Leibniz used infinitesimal quantities. In the second half of the 20th century, it was shown that this treatment could be put on a rigorous footing through various
logical system A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. These rules, which are used for carrying out the inference of theorems from axioms, are the logical calculus of the formal system. A for ...
s, including smooth infinitesimal analysis and nonstandard analysis. In the latter, infinitesimals are invertible, and their inverses are infinite numbers. The infinities in this sense are part of a hyperreal field; there is no equivalence between them as with the Cantorian transfinites. For example, if H is an infinite number in this sense, then H + H = 2H and H + 1 are distinct infinite numbers. This approach to non-standard calculus is fully developed in .


Set theory

A different form of "infinity" are the ordinal and
cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **'' Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...
infinities of set theory—a system of transfinite numbers first developed by
Georg Cantor Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor ( , ;  – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. He played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance o ...
. In this system, the first transfinite cardinal is aleph-null (0), the cardinality of the set of
natural number In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country"). Numbers used for counting are called '' cardinal ...
s. This modern mathematical conception of the quantitative infinite developed in the late 19th century from works by Cantor,
Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic p ...
, Richard Dedekind and others—using the idea of collections or sets. Dedekind's approach was essentially to adopt the idea of one-to-one correspondence as a standard for comparing the size of sets, and to reject the view of Galileo (derived from
Euclid Euclid (; grc-gre, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of ...
) that the whole cannot be the same size as the part. (However, see Galileo's paradox where Galileo concludes that positive integers cannot be compared to the subset of positive square integers since both are infinite sets.) An infinite set can simply be defined as one having the same size as at least one of its proper parts; this notion of infinity is called Dedekind infinite. The diagram to the right gives an example: viewing lines as infinite sets of points, the left half of the lower blue line can be mapped in a one-to-one manner (green correspondences) to the higher blue line, and, in turn, to the whole lower blue line (red correspondences); therefore the whole lower blue line and its left half have the same cardinality, i.e. "size". Cantor defined two kinds of infinite numbers: ordinal numbers and
cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. ...
s. Ordinal numbers characterize well-ordered sets, or counting carried on to any stopping point, including points after an infinite number have already been counted. Generalizing finite and (ordinary) infinite
sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called ...
s which are maps from the positive integers leads to mappings from ordinal numbers to transfinite sequences. Cardinal numbers define the size of sets, meaning how many members they contain, and can be standardized by choosing the first ordinal number of a certain size to represent the cardinal number of that size. The smallest ordinal infinity is that of the positive integers, and any set which has the cardinality of the integers is
countably infinite In mathematics, a set is countable if either it is finite or it can be made in one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Equivalently, a set is ''countable'' if there exists an injective function from it into the natural number ...
. If a set is too large to be put in one-to-one correspondence with the positive integers, it is called '' uncountable''. Cantor's views prevailed and modern mathematics accepts actual infinity as part of a consistent and coherent theory. Certain extended number systems, such as the hyperreal numbers, incorporate the ordinary (finite) numbers and infinite numbers of different sizes.


Cardinality of the continuum

One of Cantor's most important results was that the cardinality of the continuum \mathbf c is greater than that of the natural numbers ; that is, there are more real numbers than natural numbers . Namely, Cantor showed that \mathbf=2^>. The continuum hypothesis states that there is no
cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. ...
between the cardinality of the reals and the cardinality of the natural numbers, that is, \mathbf=\aleph_1=\beth_1.This hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved within the widely accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, even assuming the
Axiom of Choice In mathematics, the axiom of choice, or AC, is an axiom of set theory equivalent to the statement that ''a Cartesian product of a collection of non-empty sets is non-empty''. Informally put, the axiom of choice says that given any collection ...
. Cardinal arithmetic can be used to show not only that the number of points in a real number line is equal to the number of points in any segment of that line, but also that this is equal to the number of points on a plane and, indeed, in any
finite-dimensional In mathematics, the dimension of a vector space ''V'' is the cardinality (i.e., the number of vectors) of a basis of ''V'' over its base field. p. 44, §2.36 It is sometimes called Hamel dimension (after Georg Hamel) or algebraic dimension to d ...
space. The first of these results is apparent by considering, for instance, the tangent function, which provides a one-to-one correspondence between the interval () and.The second result was proved by Cantor in 1878, but only became intuitively apparent in 1890, when Giuseppe Peano introduced the
space-filling curve In mathematical analysis, a space-filling curve is a curve whose range contains the entire 2-dimensional unit square (or more generally an ''n''-dimensional unit hypercube). Because Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) was the first to discover one, ...
s, curved lines that twist and turn enough to fill the whole of any square, or cube, or hypercube, or finite-dimensional space. These curves can be used to define a one-to-one correspondence between the points on one side of a square and the points in the square.


Geometry

Until the end of the 19th century, infinity was rarely discussed in
geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
, except in the context of processes that could be continued without any limit. For example, a line was what is now called a line segment, with the proviso that one can extend it as far as one wants; but extending it ''infinitely'' was out of the question. Similarly, a line was usually not considered to be composed of infinitely many points, but was a location where a point may be placed. Even if there are infinitely many possible positions, only a finite number of points could be placed on a line. A witness of this is the expression "the locus of ''a point'' that satisfies some property" (singular), where modern mathematicians would generally say "the set of ''the points'' that have the property" (plural). One of the rare exceptions of a mathematical concept involving actual infinity was projective geometry, where points at infinity are added to the
Euclidean space Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, that is, in Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are Euclidea ...
for modeling the perspective effect that shows parallel lines intersecting "at infinity". Mathematically, points at infinity have the advantage of allowing one to not consider some special cases. For example, in a projective plane, two distinct lines intersect in exactly one point, whereas without points at infinity, there are no intersection points for parallel lines. So, parallel and non-parallel lines must be studied separately in classical geometry, while they need not to be distinguished in projective geometry. Before the use of
set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly concern ...
for the foundation of mathematics, points and lines were viewed as distinct entities, and a point could be ''located on a line''. With the universal use of set theory in mathematics, the point of view has dramatically changed: a line is now considered as ''the set of its points'', and one says that a point ''belongs to a line'' instead of ''is located on a line'' (however, the latter phrase is still used). In particular, in modern mathematics, lines are ''infinite sets''.


Infinite dimension

The
vector space In mathematics and physics, a vector space (also called a linear space) is a set whose elements, often called '' vectors'', may be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers called ''scalars''. Scalars are often real numbers, but can ...
s that occur in classical
geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
have always a finite
dimension In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coord ...
, generally two or three. However, this is not implied by the abstract definition of a vector space, and vector spaces of infinite dimension can be considered. This is typically the case in
functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defi ...
where
function space In mathematics, a function space is a set of functions between two fixed sets. Often, the domain and/or codomain will have additional structure which is inherited by the function space. For example, the set of functions from any set into a vect ...
s are generally vector spaces of infinite dimension. In topology, some constructions can generate
topological space In mathematics, a topological space is, roughly speaking, a geometrical space in which closeness is defined but cannot necessarily be measured by a numeric distance. More specifically, a topological space is a set whose elements are called poin ...
s of infinite dimension. In particular, this is the case of iterated loop spaces.


Fractals

The structure of a fractal object is reiterated in its magnifications. Fractals can be magnified indefinitely without losing their structure and becoming "smooth"; they have infinite perimeters, and can have infinite or finite areas. One such fractal curve with an infinite perimeter and finite area is the Koch snowflake.


Mathematics without infinity

Leopold Kronecker was skeptical of the notion of infinity and how his fellow mathematicians were using it in the 1870s and 1880s. This skepticism was developed in the
philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people' ...
called finitism, an extreme form of mathematical philosophy in the general philosophical and mathematical schools of constructivism and
intuitionism In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of f ...
.


Physics

In
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
, approximations of
real number In mathematics, a real number is a number that can be used to measure a ''continuous'' one-dimensional quantity such as a distance, duration or temperature. Here, ''continuous'' means that values can have arbitrarily small variations. Every ...
s are used for
continuous Continuity or continuous may refer to: Mathematics * Continuity (mathematics), the opposing concept to discreteness; common examples include ** Continuous probability distribution or random variable in probability and statistics ** Continuous g ...
measurements and
natural number In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country"). Numbers used for counting are called '' cardinal ...
s are used for discrete measurements (i.e., counting). Concepts of infinite things such as an infinite
plane wave In physics, a plane wave is a special case of wave or field: a physical quantity whose value, at any moment, is constant through any plane that is perpendicular to a fixed direction in space. For any position \vec x in space and any time t, ...
exist, but there are no experimental means to generate them.


Cosmology

The first published proposal that the universe is infinite came from Thomas Digges in 1576. Eight years later, in 1584, the Italian philosopher and astronomer Giordano Bruno proposed an unbounded universe in ''On the Infinite Universe and Worlds'': "Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds." Cosmologists have long sought to discover whether infinity exists in our physical
universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...
: Are there an infinite number of stars? Does the universe have infinite volume? Does space " go on forever"? This is still an open question of
cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
. The question of being infinite is logically separate from the question of having boundaries. The two-dimensional surface of the Earth, for example, is finite, yet has no edge. By travelling in a straight line with respect to the Earth's curvature, one will eventually return to the exact spot one started from. The universe, at least in principle, might have a similar
topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...
. If so, one might eventually return to one's starting point after travelling in a straight line through the universe for long enough. The curvature of the universe can be measured through multipole moments in the spectrum of the
cosmic background radiation Cosmic background radiation is electromagnetic radiation from the Big Bang. The origin of this radiation depends on the region of the spectrum that is observed. One component is the cosmic microwave background. This component is redshifted ph ...
. To date, analysis of the radiation patterns recorded by the WMAP spacecraft hints that the universe has a flat topology. This would be consistent with an infinite physical universe. However, the universe could be finite, even if its curvature is flat. An easy way to understand this is to consider two-dimensional examples, such as video games where items that leave one edge of the screen reappear on the other. The topology of such games is toroidal and the geometry is flat. Many possible bounded, flat possibilities also exist for three-dimensional space. The concept of infinity also extends to the multiverse hypothesis, which, when explained by astrophysicists such as Michio Kaku, posits that there are an infinite number and variety of universes. Also, cyclic models posit an infinite amount of Big Bangs, resulting in an infinite variety of universes after each Big Bang event in an infinite cycle.


Logic

In
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from prem ...
, an
infinite regress An infinite regress is an infinite series of entities governed by a recursive principle that determines how each entity in the series depends on or is produced by its predecessor. In the epistemic regress, for example, a belief is justified bec ...
argument is "a distinctively philosophical kind of argument purporting to show that a thesis is defective because it generates an infinite series when either (form A) no such series exists or (form B) were it to exist, the thesis would lack the role (e.g., of justification) that it is supposed to play."


Computing

The IEEE floating-point standard (IEEE 754) specifies a positive and a negative infinity value (and also indefinite values). These are defined as the result of arithmetic overflow, division by zero, and other exceptional operations. Some
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...
s, such as
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
and J, allow the programmer an explicit access to the positive and negative infinity values as language constants. These can be used as
greatest and least elements In mathematics, especially in order theory, the greatest element of a subset S of a partially ordered set (poset) is an element of S that is greater than every other element of S. The term least element is defined dually, that is, it is an el ...
, as they compare (respectively) greater than or less than all other values. They have uses as sentinel values in
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
s involving sorting, searching, or windowing. In languages that do not have greatest and least elements, but do allow overloading of relational operators, it is possible for a programmer to ''create'' the greatest and least elements. In languages that do not provide explicit access to such values from the initial state of the program, but do implement the floating-point
data type In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allowed operations on it. A data type tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most progra ...
, the infinity values may still be accessible and usable as the result of certain operations. In programming, an infinite loop is a
loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, an ...
whose exit condition is never satisfied, thus executing indefinitely.


Arts, games, and cognitive sciences

Perspective artwork uses the concept of vanishing points, roughly corresponding to mathematical points at infinity, located at an infinite distance from the observer. This allows artists to create paintings that realistically render space, distances, and forms. Artist M.C. Escher is specifically known for employing the concept of infinity in his work in this and other ways. Variations of
chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
played on an unbounded board are called infinite chess. Cognitive scientist
George Lakoff George Philip Lakoff (; born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his thesis that people's lives are significantly influenced by the conceptual metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena. The con ...
considers the concept of infinity in mathematics and the sciences as a metaphor. This perspective is based on the basic metaphor of infinity (BMI), defined as the ever-increasing sequence <1,2,3,...>.


See also

* 0.999... * Aleph number * Ananta *
Exponentiation Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to ...
* Indeterminate form *
Infinite monkey theorem The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would ...
* Infinite set * Infinitesimal * Paradoxes of infinity * Supertask * Surreal number


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * *


Sources

* * D.P. Agrawal (2000).
Ancient Jaina Mathematics: an Introduction
'
Infinity Foundation
* Bell, J.L.: Continuity and infinitesimals. Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy. Revised 2009. *. * * Jain, L.C. (1973). "Set theory in the Jaina school of mathematics", ''Indian Journal of History of Science''. * * H. Jerome Keisler: Elementary Calculus: An Approach Using Infinitesimals. First edition 1976; 2nd edition 1986. This book is now out of print. The publisher has reverted the copyright to the author, who has made available the 2nd edition in .pdf format available for downloading at http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html * * O'Connor, John J. and Edmund F. Robertson (1998)

, '' MacTutor History of Mathematics archive''. * O'Connor, John J. and Edmund F. Robertson (2000)
'Jaina mathematics'
, ''MacTutor History of Mathematics archive''. * Pearce, Ian. (2002)

''MacTutor History of Mathematics archive''. * *


External links

* * *

'', by Peter Suber. From the St. John's Review, XLIV, 2 (1998) 1–59. The stand-alone appendix to ''Infinite Reflections'', below. A concise introduction to Cantor's mathematics of infinite sets. *

'', by Peter Suber. How Cantor's mathematics of the infinite solves a handful of ancient philosophical problems of the infinite. From the St. John's Review, XLIV, 2 (1998) 1–59. *

* John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson (1998)

, '' MacTutor History of Mathematics archive''. * John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson (2000)
'Jaina mathematics'
, ''MacTutor History of Mathematics archive''. * Ian Pearce (2002)

''MacTutor History of Mathematics archive''.



* ttp://dictionary.of-the-infinite.com Dictionary of the Infinite(compilation of articles about infinity in physics, mathematics, and philosophy) {{Authority control Concepts in logic Philosophy of mathematics Mathematical objects