Infinity

Infinity fascinates me. The German word for it translates literally as "without end". To someone who studies mathematics, infinity is always a special case but also a powerful tool and construct. We take limits to infinity, sums of infinite terms . . . and it can yield some bizarre results. And yet our finite minds cannot actually handle infinity itself.

For example, take one common example of infinity (to a math person anyway) the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . There is no biggest natural number. They go on without end, or to infinity. But infinity is larger than any natural number, so many think of it naively as the largest natural number. It's the only way to get a handle on it.

Another is to stare into a part of the night sky without a star in it. Of course, in all probability there IS a star there somewhere, but we can't see it and so the darkness goes on forever, to infinity, without end. Just thinking about flying beyond every star to a place where there are no more before you forever in unimaginable. Our little minds just can't handle the concept.

This isn't really that surprising. We can't handle lots of finite things either. Try visualizing 4 trillion of something. Or a fourth dimension of space. Look at you computer for a moment and try to think of everything that had to happen to get it manufactured and to you. First you had to buy it and get it home. That means a vehicle and a credit card (probably). How does a car work? It had to be bought, but before that assembled from parts which were bought ready-made. But by whom? How did they do it, how did they know to? Swiftly we reach a point where the sheer complexity of the tangled mesh of requirements to put the computer under your gaze overwhelms the mind.