Meditations on “infinity” (with apologies for taking liberties in the Holiday spirit)
Les deux infinis
Infinity has at least two meanings. We sometimes forget that the word is used very differently in math and in science, and we conflate the two.
For the mathematician, infinity is an abstraction with a pure and definite meaning, with some but not all the properties of a number. There is the magic that says that the infinity of even integers is exactly the same as the infinity of all integers, even and odd. More amazing is that the count of all fractional numbers like 1.65 and 3¾ and 0.142857142857142857… is also this same infinity. Yet there are infinitely many different infinities, labeled אo, אl, etc. and in the same sense, each can be demonstrated to be not equal, but “larger” than the one that precedes it.
To read the original article: What would it mean to live forever? | Josh Mitteldorf
