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No he's not, he's saying that infinity is a useful abstraction for dealing with "arbitrarily large". That often the tools we have for dealing with infinity can
by samdk 16y ago
No he's not, he's saying that infinity is a useful abstraction for dealing with "arbitrarily large". That often the tools we have for dealing with infinity can give us a better idea of how things behave in arbitrary large cases than the tools we have for dealing with smaller, more manageable cases.
His point is that infinity and the tools we have for dealing with it are useful, not pointless abstractions.
- jgershen 16y agoI understand that point and I agree. What I'm saying is that upon reading the article closely, I noticed he was primarily promoting the "view infinite as arbitrarily large" technique for dealing with the appearance of infinity. Example quote from article: "Interpret the problem as saying that the width of the capacitor is so large relative to its thickness that you don’t have to worry about edge effects."