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This post mirrors the the medieval take on infinity. Modern mathematics is happy with actual infinities.
by philipswood 4y ago
This post mirrors the the medieval take on infinity.
Modern mathematics is happy with actual infinities.
- majormajor 4y agoYeah, this was a VERY controversial subject for a long time. Maybe even still today! David Foster Wallace's Everything and More was an enjoyable history of the topic. I think the rebuttal to the author's "write all the primes down, you can't" would be something like "tell me how many numbers there are between 0 and 1." I'd die before I'd finish writing out all the primes, but the author or that professor referenced in the article could just never even have a way to give me an answer to my request. (EDIT: If they say that's not "real-world" enough, how many possible pieces of wood of distinct length could they cut that would be between 0 and 1 meters long? Unless someone wanted to try to brute-force it based on like molecule size... maybe it's not truly infinite? But could you even measure that difference? Which brings you back to infinity from a precision aspect...)
- Nick87633 4y agoThat's easy, one piece of wood! A right triangle 1 meter long
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bitforger 4y agoI think this depends on if you're a constructivist, no?