IHT 211 Infinity (Fall 2015)

Introduction to Infinity

What is the infinite? Can we talk about it and understand it? How do we talk about it?
Firstly, the infinite may or may not be a thing. We acknowledge and know infinity primarily as
a concept.
What are concepts?
Ideas, symbols, meanings, terms, representations [of the world, of other concepts], etc.
Some concepts are trivial. For example, the concepts of: twerking, selfies or flip-flop shoes.
We can live meaningful lives without them and never thinking of or using them.
Some concepts are essential for most people who use them in order to live meaningful lives: the
concepts of God, Nature, Personhood, Thing, Time, Space, etc. are considered historically more
important.
The infinite is considered by many thinkers to fall into the second category.
Concepts are usually formed by us either by direct experience or by some kind of mental
abstraction from immediate experience (both mental and sensible) and especially though the use
of language.
E.g. In forming the concept of a dog, I must at some point have experienced a dog or dog-like
entity, to understand what red is or the taste of pineapple, I need to have experienced examples of
redness and the taste of pineapples.
What experiences compose the infinite? How and from what do we abstract the concept of
infinity?
If we can agree that we never immediately and directly grasp the infinite in normal experience
there are only two possibilities:
We intuit the infinite in mystical state or we abstract the infinite from other experiences, e.g. the
common experience of one finite thing/state and another finite thing/state and the subsequent
intuition that whatever is determined can be transcended or is transcended.

For example, when we reflect on existence and the universe we might eventually want to know,
how large is the world, galaxy, cosmos, universe? The possibility of infinity now arises.
If things exist within established boundaries, there must be a context lying beyond the fixed
boundary of one thing and leading to the space extending beyond the boundary that we can call
other than x (this thing- whatever this is).
Lets call this physical infinity.
Are there other kinds of infinities?
What about the limitless potential of thought itself and objects of thought?
Mathematics is the natural realm to seek expression of this second, abstract, kind of infinity, but
physical and mathematical infinity is sometimes separated from the mystical intuition of the all
or absolute.
So, before proceeding, lets take a look at the characteristics ascribed to the infinite as these have
been described through history:
The label of the Infinite has been understood and applied to all of the following:
A) Boundlessness, Endlessness; Unlimitedness; Immeasurability; and Eternity, on the one
hand.
But also to,
B) Perfection; Completeness; Wholeness; Absolute Unity; Universality; Absoluteness; SelfSufficiency; Autonomy, on the other.
As A. W. Moore points out in his book The Infinite (New York: Routledge Press, 1990),
The concepts in [A] are more negative and convey a sense of potentiality. They are the concepts
that might be expected to inform a more mathematical or logical discussion of the infinite. The
concepts in the second cluster [B] are more positive and convey a sense of actuality. They are the
concepts that might be expected to inform a more metaphysical or theological discussion of the
infinite (Moore 1990, 2)
So we find the concept of the infinite overlapping across the realms of: logic, mathematics,
physics, metaphysics (i.e. what, if anything, is beyond the physical) and theology.

Aims of this Course

This course will examine the concept of infinity and what it might mean. In the process we will
examine some of the most important ideas and applications of the infinite. The infinite has
influenced our culture and its impact has been felt in religion, art, science and philosophy.
Because the concept of infinity is so broad and complex the basic approach taken by the course
will be philosophical but with a special emphasis on the scientific or quantitative (physical and
mathematical) applications of the infinite.
The methodological approach we take to analyze the infinite will also be chronological. The
course is divided into four sections:
IIIIIIIV-

Infinity in the Ancient World,

Medieval Conceptions of the Infinite, and
Renaissance [Early Modern] Conceptions of the Infinite
The Infinite in Modernity The Science & the Trans-finite

Each section will in turn explore how the concept of infinity has been examined historically and
how different cultures and traditions have reacted to the infinite. The possible existence and
potential meaning of the infinite as it relates to both the world and us is the primary focus of the
course.

The Philosophical Emphasis

Philosophy is, amongst other things, the intellectual discipline that studies argumentation and
seeks the truth about the world and our place in it. Philosophy is the ideal discipline to use in
approaching the study of basic or essential concepts because only philosophy can connect
different disciplines together in order to arrive at a broader perspective and clarify our
understanding in a fundamental way.
Philosophers often rely on two tools in order to formulate theories and arrive at a deeper
understanding of the world. The first is the use of use of logic to analyze concepts and the
structure of reasoning involving concepts, and the second is the use of imagination.
By using logic, I mean both formal and informal logic. Logic is (formally) the study of the
structure of thought and the exploration of the coherence and rational properties of reasoned
arguments. Logic is the tool that allows us to clarify, apply, organize and increase knowledge and
logic, having truth as its normative goal, is essential for science. But not all science is strictly
formal. Induction and experiment also make use of assumptions and methods that are informal
but essential to modern science.
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In a formal sense, applying logic in its pure or theoretical form, all arguments are either: valid or
invalid (i.e. they either contain or avoid contradictions) and all arguments have premises that are
either sound (true) or unsound (untrue).
When studying soundness we must move beyond merely formal concerns. If I argue, for
example, that the world is really made of cheese, I can formulate a valid argument based on this
premise:
For example:
Hypothesis: (1) The world (and the totality of things in the physical universe) is actually
cheese
Premise:

(2) Professor Tassone is a part of the world, therefore

Conclusion: (3) Professor Tassone is made out of cheese.

From the hypothesis that everything is made out of cheese, and the premise that I am a part of
the world, I deduce that I am made out of cheese. This is a valid argument (in fact its a valid
syllogism, i.e., an argument having three steps and deductively arriving at a conclusion through a
middle premise or term). A valid argument is any argument whose conclusion is a logically
derived from its premises. So, the above argument is valid, but it is unsound. It is unsound
because the world is not made out of cheese. Cheese is a product and part of the world but is
itself made up of other more essential properties (atoms, particles, etc.).
So validity and non-validity are different from soundness and unsound assumptions. The analysis
of form is important, however, because no invalid argument can reliably be said to be true and
the presence of a contradiction is the sure-fire sign that an argument is suspicious
An Invalid argument rarely leads to deeper understanding or truth:
Hypothesis: (1) All Human beings are mammals,
Premise (2) Socrates is a Human being,
Conclusion (3) Socrates loves Cheese.
This is a very different argument from the valid one given above. Notice that the hypothesis of
this argument, so far as we know, is also sound. But the form is invalid and consequently it is not
a very useful argument to help us arrive at any deeper understanding of the ideas it employs.

The strictly logical study of the infinite runs us into problems because of the complex nature of
the infinite as a concept. We really dont know if the hypothesis holding that the infinite actually
exists is sound or unsound. Arguments can be made and offered for both cases. Therefore, for
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reasons of clarity and intellectual cleanliness, we can separate the logical and mathematical from
the physical and metaphysical/theological senses of the infinite.
What grounds can we give for separating the mathematical (formal) from the physical (nonformal) senses of the infinite?
In the course of our investigation the reasons for separating the infinite will become more clear,
for now, we can say that problems emerge when the two senses are united:

Case study 1: Zenos Arrow

Zeno was a student of Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher who believed that reality was a
single unchanging and perfect whole. Zeno tried to vindicate his teachers view by presenting
paradoxes to show the untenable alternative that all anti-Parmenidean approaches succumb to. In
this way Zeno tried to respond to Parmenides critics. These paradoxes were of two kinds:
paradoxes of motion and paradoxes of plurality.
The following is one of Zenos paradoxes of motion.
An Arrow in flight is really stationary.
Hypothesis: Time is composed of instantaneous moments,
(1) We can never say when now really happens.
(2) The now as grasped in the present moment instantaneously slips into the not now the
instant you affirm it.
(3) The arrow is supposed to be in place A at time A
(4) Since time A is automatically time B, then there is no true movement of the arrow
(5) Time as a co-ordinate doesnt exist except in our minds
(6) The arrow never really moves it only appears to move,
(7) Proof: an infinite instants of time can be said to accompany each moment of the arrows
flight
(8) Conclusion: the flying arrow is stationary
How can this hypothesis be sound! It contradicts the evidence of experience that tell us that time
flows. But since time seems to flow at different rates, how do we know that there is an objective
time, i.e. a single time that flows uniformly and is the same for everyone? To complicate our
common sense notion of time even further, if we believe Einstein and modern physics then the
notion of absolute time and space must be abandoned.
But ignoring the deeper problems of the reality of time and space is the argument Zeno gives
valid?
It has a valid form, so- yes.
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Is it true? This is not so easy to answer. What counter-arguments can be given?

Bertrand Russells response.

According to the famous 20th century English philosopher Bertrand Russell, Zenos arrow
argument is an ad hominem (an attack on those defending motion as real) and can be summarized
as follows, [the arrow] is never moving, but in some miraculous way the change of position has
to occur between the instants, that is to say, not at any time whatever (see Course Reader).
Ignoring whether Zeno is giving an ad hominem argument to deny motion or presenting a
reductio ad absurdum argument against believers in change and motion (I think the latter better
characterizes his paradox), we can see that Russell thinks he has hit on a solution.
Russells solution is to give a mathematical response using what is called trans-finite methods.
Russell takes these methods from two German thinkers, Bernard Bolzano and Georg Cantor and
applies them to Zenos paradox saying that his approach effectively describes the true nature of
motion such that it invalidates the paradox.
Essentially, Russell argues that rate of change is not indeterminate but instead an infinitesimal
such that it is beyond sensory or physical representation. Russells solution to the paradox can be
represented through application of calculus - which traces the rate of change arithmetically and
analytically against a geometrically co-ordinate abstract (mathematical) space. Even so, it must
be accepted since science and quantitative reasoning about change needs the concept of ideal
limit to be able to explain complex motion in the world.
Mathematically, therefore, an infinitesimal can be viewed (in the words of William I.
McLaughlin) as:
an interval of space or time that embodies the quintessence of smallness. An infinitesimal
quantity..... would be so very near zero as to be numerically impotent; such quantities would
elude all measurement, no matter how precise.1
In other words, we are dealing with an ideal limit, but one that can be described mathematically.
We will examine the problem of infinity in calculus in part four of the course.
Zeno, of course, would say that he was not trying to do mathematics (or, at least, not primarily
so) and so Russells answer misses the metaphysical mark.
Who is right and who is wrong? We can bracket any answer to this question for the moment.

1 See: William I. McLaughlin, Resolving Zenos Paradoxes, Scientific American, no. 5 (1994): 69
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Instead lets use the Zeno-Russell debate as a case study giving good grounds for accepting that a
conceptual distinction should be made between physical or metaphysical/ real versus logical and
mathematical or potentially real forms of infinity.
In the next section we will examine the earliest formulation of physical infinity in science by
looking at the works of Thales and Anaximander..