Wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. The mystery of infinity has intrigued mathematicians for thousands of years. Still, many of the greatest thinkers, from pythagoras to galileo, even the great gauss refused to tackle it, deeming infinity to be unthinkable. But believe it or not, the idea of infinity begins with something as simple as counting and the way in which we measure the world. As humans, we find hints of infinity as soon as we learn to count. Once we run out of fingers, we realize there might be a neverending number of things, from the grains of sand on planet earth to the stars in the heavens. Faced with orders of magnitude beyond what our human senses can comprehend, many great minds have concluded that infinity is outside the purview of mathematics and best left to philosophers and theologians. In fact, the subject has been taboo for mathematicians throughout much of history perhaps most especially the ancient greeks because it seeme
To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas. -Ivars Peterson