Ramanujan Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS ( pronunciation (helpinfo)) (Tamil:

; 22 December 1887 26 April

1920) was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. Living in India with no access to the larger mathematical community, which was centred in Europe at the time, Ramanujan developed his own mathematical research in isolation. As a result, he sometimes rediscovered known theorems in addition to producing new work. Ramanujan was said to be a natural genius by the English mathematician G. H. Hardy, in the same league as mathematicians such as Euler and Gauss.[1] He died at the age of 32. Born at Erode, Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu) in a Tamil Brahmin family of Thenkalai Iyengar sect[2][3][4] Ramanujan's introduction to formal mathematics began at age 10. He demonstrated a natural ability, and was given books on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney that he mastered by the age of 12; he even discovered theorems of his own, and re-discovered Euler's identity independently.[5] He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning

accolades and awards. By 17, Ramanujan had conducted his own mathematical research on Bernoulli numbers and the EulerMascheroni constant. Ramanujan received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam, which was later rescinded when he failed his nonmathematical coursework. He joined another college to pursue independent mathematical research, working as a clerk in the Accountant-General's office at the Madras Port Trust Office to support himself.[6] In 19121913, he sent samples of his theorems to three academics at the University of Cambridge. G. H. Hardy, recognizing the brilliance of his work, invited Ramanujan to visit and work with him at Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Ramanujan died of illness, malnutrition, and possibly liver infection in 1920 at the age of 32. Although there are numerous statements that could bear the name Ramanujan conjecture, there is one statement that was very influential on later work. In particular, the connection of this conjecture with conjectures of Andr Weil in algebraic geometry opened up new areas of research. That Ramanujan conjecture is an assertion on the size of the Tau-function, which has as generating function the discriminant modular form (q), a typical

cusp form in the theory of modular forms. It was finally proven in 1973, as a consequence of Pierre Deligne's proof of the Weil conjectures. The reduction step involved is complicated. Deligne won a Fields Medal in 1978 for his work on Weil conjectures.[93] Ramanujan's notebooks Further information: Ramanujan's lost notebook While still in Madras, Ramanujan recorded the bulk of his results in four notebooks of loose leaf paper. These results were mostly written up without any derivations. This is probably the origin of the misperception that Ramanujan was unable to prove his results and simply thought up the final result directly. Mathematician Bruce C. Berndt, in his review of these notebooks and Ramanujan's work, says that Ramanujan most certainly was able to make the proofs of most of his results, but chose not to. This style of working may have been for several reasons. Since paper was very expensive, Ramanujan would do most of his work and perhaps his proofs on slate, and then transfer just the results to paper. Using a slate was common for mathematics students in the Madras Presidency at the time. He was also quite likely to have been influenced by the style of

G. S. Carr's book studied in his youth, which stated results without proofs. Finally, it is possible that Ramanujan considered his workings to be for his personal interest alone; and therefore recorded only the results.[94] The first notebook has 351 pages with 16 somewhat organized chapters and some unorganized material. The second notebook has 256 pages in 21 chapters and 100 unorganised pages, with the third notebook containing 33 unorganised pages. The results in his notebooks inspired numerous papers by later mathematicians trying to prove what he had found. Hardy himself created papers exploring material from Ramanujan's work as did G. N. Watson, B. M. Wilson, and Bruce Berndt.[94] A fourth notebook with 87 unorganised pages, the so-called "lost notebook", was rediscovered in 1976 by George Andrews.[6] Notebooks 1, 2 and 3 were published as a two-volume set in 1957 by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India. This was a photocopy edition of the original manuscripts, in his own handwriting. In December 2011, as part of the celebrations of the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth, TIFR republished the notebooks in a colored twovolume collector's edition. These were produced from scanned and

microfilmed images of the original manuscripts by expert archivists of Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai. The number 1729 is known as the HardyRamanujan number after a famous anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy regarding a visit to the hospital to see Ramanujan. In Hardy's words:[95] I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." The two different ways are 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103. Generalizations of this idea have created the notion of "taxicab numbers". Coincidentally, 1729 is also a Carmichael number. Thanatos

In Greek mythology, Thanatos (Ancient Greek: , Thnatos, "Death,"[1] from - thnsk, "to die, be dying"[2]) was the daemon personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person. His name is transliterated in Latin as Thanatus, but his equivalent in Roman mythology is Mors or Letus/Letum,[citation needed] and he is sometimes identified erroneously with Orcus (Orcus himself had a Greek equivalent in the form of Horkos, God of the Oath). In myth and poetry The Greek poet Hesiod established in his Theogony that Thnatos is a son of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness) and twin of Hypnos (Sleep). "And there the children of dark Night have their dwellings, Sleep and Death, awful gods. The glowing Sun never looks upon them with his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from heaven. And the former of them roams peacefully over the earth and the sea's broad back and is kindly to men; but the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods.

Art & sculpture In later eras, as the transition from life to death in Elysium became a more attractive option, Thanatos came to be seen as a beautiful Ephebe. He became associated more with a gentle passing than a woeful demise. Many Roman sarcophagi depict him as a winged boy, very much akin to Cupid: "Eros with crossed legs and torch reversed became the commonest of all symbols for Death", observes Arthur Bernard Cook.[8] Medicine According to Sigmund Freud, humans have a life instinctwhich he named "Eros"and a death drive, which is commonly called (though not by Freud himself) "Thanatos". This postulated death drive allegedly compels humans to engage in risky and selfdestructive acts that could lead to their own death. Behaviors such as thrill seeking and aggression are viewed as actions which stem from this Thanatos instinct. Thanatophobia is the fear of things associated with or reminiscent of death and mortality, such as corpses or graveyards. It is related to necrophobia, although the latter term typically refers to a specific fear of dead bodies rather than a fear of death in general.

Thanatology is the academic and scientific study of death among human beings. It investigates the circumstances surrounding a person's death, the grief experienced by the deceased's loved ones, and larger social attitudes towards death such as ritual and memorialization. It is primarily an interdisciplinary study, frequently undertaken by professionals in nursing, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, social work and veterinary science. It also describes bodily changes that accompany death and the after-death period. Thanatophoric dysplasia, so named because of its lethality at birth, is the most common lethal congenital skeletal dysplasia with an estimated prevalence of one in 6,400 to one in 16,700 births. Its name Thanatophoros, means "death-bearing" in Greek. Euthanasia, "good death" in Greek, is the act or practice of ending the life of an individual who would otherwise experience severe, incurable suffering or disability. It typically involves lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment. Doctor Jack Kevorkian named his euthanasia device the Thanatron. Zero 0 (zero; BrE: /zr/ or AmE: /ziro/) is both a number[1] and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It fulfils a

central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, 0 is used as a placeholder in place value systems. In the English language, 0 may be called zero, nought or (US) naught /nt/, nil, or in contexts where at least one adjacent digit distinguishes it from the letter "O" oh or o /o/. Informal or slang terms for zero include zilch and zip.[2] Ought or aught /t/ has also been used historically.[3] (See Names for the number 0 in English.) The word zero came via French zro from Venetian zero, which (together with cypher) came via Italian zefiro from Arabic , afira = "it was empty", ifr = "zero", "nothing". This was a translation of the Sanskrit word shoonya (nya), meaning "empty". The first known English use was in 1598.[4][5][6][7] In 976 AD the Persian encyclopedist Muhammad ibn Ahmad alKhwarizmi, in his "Keys of the Sciences", remarked that if, in a calculation, no number appears in the place of tens, then a little circle should be used "to keep the rows". This circle was called ( ifr, "empty") in Arabic language. That was the earliest mention of the name ifr that eventually became zero.[8]

As the decimal zero and its new mathematics spread from the Arab world to Europe in the Middle Ages, words derived from ifr and zephyrus came to refer to calculation, as well as to privileged knowledge and secret codes. According to Ifrah, "in thirteenth-century Paris, a 'worthless fellow' was called a '... cifre en algorisme', i.e., an 'arithmetical nothing'."[9] From ifr also came French chiffre = "digit", "figure", "number", chiffrer = "to calculate or compute", chiffr = "encrypted". Today, the word in Arabic is still ifr, and cognates of ifr are common in the languages of Europe and southwest Asia. There are different words used for the number or concept of zero depending on the context. For the simple notion of lacking, the words nothing and none are often used, while nought, naught and aught[10] are archaic and poetic forms with the same meaning. Several sports have specific words for zero, such as nil in football, love in tennis and a duck in cricket. In British English, it is often called oh in the context of telephone numbers. Slang words for zero include zip, zilch, nada, scratch and even duck egg or goose egg.[11]

India The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol for separation is attributed to India, where, by the 9th century AD, practical calculations were carried out using zero, which was treated like any other number, even in case of division.[14][15] The Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th2nd century BC) used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code.[16][17] He and his contemporary Indian scholars used the Sanskrit word nya to refer to zero or void. In 498 AD, Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata stated that "sthnt sthna daagua syt"[18] i.e. "from place to place each is ten times the preceding,"[18][19] which is the origin of the modern decimal-based place value notation.[20][21] The oldest known text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhga, dated 458 AD, where shunya ("void" or "empty") was employed for this purpose.[22] The first known use of special glyphs for the decimal digits that includes the indubitable appearance of a symbol for the digit zero, a small circle, appears on a stone inscription found at the Chaturbhuja Temple at Gwalior in India, dated 876 AD.[23][24] There are many documents on

copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, but their authenticity may be doubted.[13] In science Physics The value zero plays a special role for many physical quantities. For some quantities, the zero level is naturally distinguished from all other levels, whereas for others it is more or less arbitrarily chosen. For example, for an absolute temperature (as measured in Kelvin) zero is the lowest possible value (negative temperatures are defined but negative temperature systems are not actually colder). This is in contrast to for example temperatures on the Celsius scale, where zero is arbitrarily defined to be at the freezing point of water. Measuring sound intensity in decibels or phons, the zero level is arbitrarily set at a reference valuefor example, at a value for the threshold of hearing. In physics, the zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess and is the energy of the ground state of the system. Chemistry Zero has been proposed as the atomic number of the theoretical element tetraneutron. It has been shown that a cluster of four neutrons may be

stable enough to be considered an atom in its own right. This would create an element with no protons and no charge on its nucleus. As early as 1926, Professor Andreas von Antropoff coined the term neutronium for a conjectured form of matter made up of neutrons with no protons, which he placed as the chemical element of atomic number zero at the head of his new version of the periodic table. It was subsequently placed as a noble gas in the middle of several spiral representations of the periodic system for classifying the chemical elements.

In other fields

In telephony, pressing 0 is often used for dialling out of a company network or to a different city or region, and 00 is used for dialling abroad. In some countries, dialling 0 places a call for operator assistance. DVDs that can be played in any region are sometimes referred to as being "region 0" Roulette wheels usually feature a "0" space (and sometimes also a "00" space), whose presence is ignored when

calculating payoffs (thereby allowing the house to win in the long run). In Formula One, if the reigning World Champion no longer competes in Formula One in the year following their victory in the title race, 0 is given to one of the drivers of the team that the reigning champion won the title with. This happened in 1993 and 1994, with Damon Hill driving car 0, due to the reigning World Champion (Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost respectively) not competing in the championship.

Infinity Infinity (symbol: ) refers to something without any limit, and is a concept relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics. The English word infinity derives from Latin infinitas, which can be translated as "unboundedness", itself calqued from the Greek word apeiros, meaning "endless".[1] In mathematics, "infinity" is often treated as if it were a number (i.e., it counts or measures things: "an infinite number of terms") but it is not the same sort of number as the real numbers. In number systems incorporating infinitesimals, the reciprocal of an infinitesimal is an infinite number, i.e., a number greater than any real number. Georg

Cantor formalized many ideas related to infinity and infinite sets during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the theory he developed, there are infinite sets of different sizes (called cardinalities).[2] For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the infinite set of real numbers is uncountable History Main article: Infinity (philosophy) Ancient cultures had various ideas about the nature of infinity. The ancient Indians and Greeks, unable to codify infinity in terms of a formalized mathematical system, approached infinity as a philosophical concept. Early Greek The earliest recorded idea of infinity comes from Anaximander, a preSocratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus. He used the word apeiron which means infinite or limitless.[4] However, the earliest attestable accounts of mathematical infinity come from Zeno of Elea (c. 490 BCE? c. 430 BCE?), a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best

known for his paradoxes, described by Bertrand Russell as "immeasurably subtle and profound". In accordance with the traditional view of Aristotle, the Hellenistic Greeks generally preferred to distinguish the potential infinity from the actual infinity; for example, instead of saying that there are an infinity of primes, Euclid prefers instead to say that there are more prime numbers than contained in any given collection of prime numbers (Elements, Book IX, Proposition 20). However, recent readings of the Archimedes Palimpsest have hinted that Archimedes at least had an intuition about actual infinite quantities. Early Indian The Isha Upanishad of the Yajurveda (c. 4th to 3rd century BCE?) states that "if you remove a part from infinity or add a part to infinity, still what remains is infinity". The Indian mathematical text Surya Prajnapti (c. 3rd4th century BCE) classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable, and infinite. Each of these was further subdivided into three orders:

Enumerable: lowest, intermediate, and highest

Innumerable: nearly innumerable, truly innumerable, and innumerably innumerable Infinite: nearly infinite, truly infinite, infinitely infinite

In the Indian work on the theory of sets, two basic types of infinite numbers are distinguished. On both physical and ontological grounds, a distinction was made between asakhyta ("countless, innumerable") and ananta ("endless, unlimited"), between rigidly bounded and loosely bounded infinities. The infinity symbol (sometimes called the lemniscate) is a mathematical symbol representing the concept of infinity. The symbol is encoded in Unicode at U+221E INFINITY (HTML: ∞ ∞) and in LaTeX as \infty. It was introduced in 1655 by John Wallis,[5][6] and, since its introduction, has also been used outside mathematics in modern mysticism[7] and literary symbology.[8] Calculus Leibniz, one of the co-inventors of infinitesimal calculus, speculated widely about infinite numbers and their use in mathematics. To Leibniz, both infinitesimals and infinite quantities were ideal entities, not of the

same nature as appreciable quantities, but enjoying the same properties.[9][10] Leopold Kronecker was skeptical of the notion of infinity and how his fellow mathematicians were using it in 1870s and 1880s. This skepticism was developed in the philosophy of mathematics called finitism, an extreme form of the philosophical and mathematical schools of constructivism and intuitionism.[11]

Pythagoras was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him. He was born on the island of Samos, and might have travelled widely in his youth, visiting Egypt and other places seeking knowledge. Around 530 BC, he moved to Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and there set up a religious sect. His followers pursued the religious rites and practices developed by Pythagoras, and studied his philosophical theories. The society took an

active role in the politics of Croton, but this eventually led to their downfall. The Pythagorean meeting-places were burned, and Pythagoras was forced to flee the city. He is said to have died in Metapontum. Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century BC. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist, but he is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. However, because legend and obfuscation cloud his work even more than that of the other preSocratic philosophers, one can give only a tentative account of his teachings, and some have questioned whether he contributed much to mathematics and natural philosophy. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors. Whether or not his disciples believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality is unknown. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom,[3] and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato, and through him, all of Western philosophy. Biographical sources Accurate facts about the life of Pythagoras are so few, and most information concerning him is of so late a date, and so untrustworthy,

that it is impossible to provide more than a vague outline of his life. The lack of information by contemporary writers, together with the secrecy which surrounded the Pythagorean brotherhood, meant that invention took the place of facts. The stories which were created were eagerly sought by the Neoplatonist writers who provide most of the details about Pythagoras, but who were uncritical concerning anything which related to the gods or which was considered divine.[4] Thus many myths were created such as that Apollo was his father; that Pythagoras gleamed with a supernatural brightness; that he had a golden thigh; that Abaris came flying to him on a golden arrow; that he was seen in different places at one and the same time.[5] With the exception of a few remarks by Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates, we are mainly dependent on Diogenes Lartius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus for the biographical details. Aristotle had written a separate work on the Pythagoreans, which unfortunately has not survived.[6] His disciples Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and Heraclides Ponticus had written on the same subject. These writers, late as they are, were among the best sources from whom Porphyry and Iamblichus drew, besides the legendary accounts and their own inventions. Hence historians are often reduced to considering the statements based on their inherent probability, but even then, if all the credible stories concerning Pythagoras were supposed true, his range of activity would be impossibly vast.[7]

Writings No texts by Pythagoras are known to have survived, although forgeries under his name a few of which remain extant did circulate in antiquity. Critical ancient sources like Aristotle and Aristoxenus cast doubt on these writings. Ancient Pythagoreans usually quoted their master's doctrines with the phrase autos ephe ("he himself said") emphasizing the essentially oral nature of his teaching. Pythagorean theorem

A visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem Since the fourth century AD, Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the

hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sidesthat is, . While the theorem that now bears his name was known and previously utilized by the Babylonians and Indians, he, or his students, are often said to have constructed the first proof. It must, however, be stressed that the way in which the Babylonians handled Pythagorean numbers implies that they knew that the principle was generally applicable, and knew some kind of proof, which has not yet been found in the (still largely unpublished) cuneiform sources.[46] Because of the secretive nature of his school and the custom of its students to attribute everything to their teacher, there is no evidence that Pythagoras himself worked on or proved this theorem. For that matter, there is no evidence that he worked on any mathematical or meta-mathematical problems. Some attribute it as a carefully constructed myth by followers of Plato over two centuries after the death of Pythagoras, mainly to bolster the case for Platonic meta-physics, which resonate well with the ideas they attributed to Pythagoras. This attribution has stuck down the centuries up to modern times.[47] The earliest known mention of Pythagoras's name in connection with the theorem occurred five centuries after his death, in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch.

Pythagorean diatonic scale on C Pythagorean tuning (Greek: ) is a system of musical tuning in which the frequency ratios of all intervals are based on the ratio 3:2, "found in the harmonic series."[1] This ratio, also known as the "pure" perfect fifth, is chosen because it is one of the most consonant and easy to tune by ear. Attributed to Pythagoras (sixth century BC), and widely used up to the beginning of the 16th century, "the Pythagorean system would appear to be ideal because of the purity of the fifths, but other intervals, particularly the major third, are so badly out of tune that major chords [may be considered] a dissonance."[1][2]

The Pythagorean scale is any scale which may be constructed from only pure perfect fifths (3:2) and octaves (2:1)[3] or the gamut of twelve pitches constructed from only pure perfect fifths and octaves, and from which specific scales may be drawn (see Generated collection). For example, the series of fifths generated above gives seven notes, a diatonic major scale on C in Pythagorean tuning, shown in notation on the top right. In Greek music it was used to tune tetrachords and the twelve tone Pythagorean system was developed by medieval music theorists using the same method of tuning in perfect fifths, however there is no evidence that Pythagoras himself went beyond the tetrachord.[4]

Life

Bust of Pythagoras, Vatican Herodotus, Isocrates, and other early writers all agree that Pythagoras was born on Samos, the Greek island in the eastern Aegean, and we also learn that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus.[8] His father was a gem-engraver or a merchant. His name led him to be associated with Pythian Apollo; Aristippus explained his name by saying, "He spoke (agor-) the truth no less than did the Pythian (Pyth-)," and Iamblichus tells the story that the Pythia prophesied that his pregnant mother would give birth to a man supremely beautiful, wise, and beneficial to humankind.[9] A late source gives his mother's name as Pythais.[10] As to

the date of his birth, Aristoxenus stated that Pythagoras left Samos in the reign of Polycrates, at the age of 40, which would give a date of birth around 570 BC.[11] It was natural for the ancient biographers to inquire as to the origins of Pythagoras' remarkable system. In the absence of reliable information, however, a huge range of teachers were assigned to Pythagoras. Some made his training almost entirely Greek, others exclusively Egyptian and Oriental. We find mentioned as his instructors Creophylus,[12] Hermodamas of Samos,[13] Bias,[12] Thales,[12] Anaximander,[14] and Pherecydes of Syros.[15] He is said too, to have been taught by a Delphic priestess named Themistoclea, who introduced him to the principles of ethics.[16][17] The Egyptians are said to have taught him geometry, the Phoenicians arithmetic, the Chaldeans astronomy, the Magians the principles of religion and practical maxims for the conduct of life.[18] Of the various claims regarding his Greek teachers, Pherecydes is mentioned most often. Diogenes Laertius reported that Pythagoras had undertaken extensive travels, and had visited not only Egypt, but Arabia, Phoenicia, Judaea, Babylon, and even India, for the purpose of collecting all available knowledge, and especially to learn information concerning the secret or mystic cults of the gods.[19] Plutarch asserted in his book On Isis and Osiris that during his visit to Egypt, Pythagoras received instruction

from the Egyptian priest Oenuphis of Heliopolis.[20] Other ancient writers asserted his visit to Egypt.[21] Enough of Egypt was known to attract the curiosity of an inquiring Greek, and contact between Samos and other parts of Greece with Egypt is mentioned.[22] It is not easy to say how much Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian priests, or indeed, whether he learned anything at all from them. There was nothing in the symbolism which the Pythagoreans adopted which showed the distinct traces of Egypt. The secret religious rites of the Pythagoreans exhibited nothing but what might have been adopted in the spirit of Greek religion, by those who knew nothing of Egyptian mysteries. The philosophy and the institutions of Pythagoras might easily have been developed by a Greek mind exposed to the ordinary influences of the age. Even the ancient authorities note the similarities between the religious and ascetic peculiarities of Pythagoras with the Orphic or Cretan mysteries,[23] or the Delphic oracle.[24] There is little direct evidence as to the kind and amount of knowledge which Pythagoras acquired, or as to his definite philosophical views. Everything of the kind mentioned by Plato and Aristotle is attributed not to Pythagoras, but to the Pythagoreans. Heraclitus stated that he was a man of extensive learning;[25] and Xenophanes claimed that he believed in the transmigration of souls.[26] Xenophanes mentions the story of his interceding on behalf of a dog that was being beaten, professing to

recognise in its cries the voice of a departed friend. Pythagoras is supposed to have claimed that he had been Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, in the Trojan war, as well as various other characters, a tradesman, a courtesan, etc.[27] In his book The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus wrote that Pythagoras knew not only who he was himself, but also who he had been.[28] Many mathematical and scientific discoveries were attributed to Pythagoras, including his famous theorem,[29] as well as discoveries in the field of music,[30] astronomy,[31] and medicine.[32] But it was the religious element which made the profoundest impression upon his contemporaries. Thus the people of Croton were supposed to have identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo,[33] and he was said to have practised divination and prophecy.[34] In the visits to various places in Greece Delos, Sparta, Phlius, Crete, etc. which are ascribed to him, he usually appears either in his religious or priestly guise, or else as a lawgiver.[35]

Croton on the southern coast of Italy, to which Pythagoras ventured after feeling overburdened in Samos. After his travels, Pythagoras moved (around 530 BC) to Croton, in Italy (Magna Graecia). Possibly the tyranny of Polycrates in Samos made it difficult for him to achieve his schemes there. His later admirers claimed that Pythagoras was so overburdened with public duties in Samos, because of the high estimation in which he was held by his fellowcitizens, that he moved to Croton.[36] On his arrival in Croton, he quickly attained extensive influence, and many people began to follow him. Later biographers tell fantastical stories of the effects of his eloquent speech in leading the people of Croton to abandon their luxurious and corrupt way of life and devote themselves to the purer system which he came to introduce.[37] His followers established a select brotherhood or club for the purpose of pursuing the religious and ascetic practices developed by their master. The accounts agree that what was done and taught among the members was kept a profound secret. The esoteric teachings may have concerned the secret religious doctrines and usages, which were undoubtedly prominent in the Pythagorean system, and may have been connected with the worship of Apollo.[38] Temperance of all kinds seems to have been strictly urged. There is disagreement among the biographers as to

whether Pythagoras forbade all animal food,[39] or only certain types.[40] The club was in practice at once "a philosophical school, a religious brotherhood, and a political association."[41]

Pythagoras, depicted on a 3rd-century coin Such an aristocratic and exclusive club could easily have made many people in Croton jealous and hostile, and this seems to have led to its destruction. The circumstances, however, are uncertain. Conflict seems to have broken out between the towns of Sybaris and Croton. The forces of Croton were headed by the Pythagorean Milo, and it is likely that the members of the brotherhood took a prominent part. After the decisive victory by Croton, a proposal for establishing a more democratic constitution, was unsuccessfully resisted by the Pythagoreans. Their enemies, headed by Cylon and Ninon, the former of whom is said to

have been irritated by his exclusion from the brotherhood, roused the populace against them. An attack was made upon them while assembled either in the house of Milo, or in some other meeting-place. The building was set on fire, and many of the assembled members perished; only the younger and more active escaping.[42] Similar commotions ensued in the other cities of Magna Graecia in which Pythagorean clubs had been formed. As an active and organised brotherhood the Pythagorean order was everywhere suppressed, and did not again revive. Still the Pythagoreans continued to exist as a sect, the members of which kept up among themselves their religious observances and scientific pursuits, while individuals, as in the case of Archytas, acquired now and then great political influence. Concerning the fate of Pythagoras himself, the accounts varied. Some say that he perished in the temple with his disciples,[43] others that he fled first to Tarentum, and that, being driven from there, he escaped to Metapontum, and there starved himself to death.[44] His tomb was shown at Metapontum in the time of Cicero.[45] According to some accounts Pythagoras married Theano, a lady of Croton. Their children are variously stated to have included a son, Telauges, and three daughters, Damo, Arignote, and Myia. Musical theories and investigations

Medieval woodcut showing Pythagoras with bells and other instruments in Pythagorean tuning See also: Pythagorean tuning and Pythagorean hammers According to legend, the way Pythagoras discovered that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations was when one day he passed blacksmiths at work, and thought that the sounds emanating from their anvils being hit were beautiful and harmonious and decided that whatever scientific law caused this to happen must be mathematical and could be applied to music. He went to the blacksmiths to learn how this had happened by looking at their tools, he discovered that it was because

the hammers were "simple ratios of each other, one was half the size of the first, another was 2/3 the size, and so on." This legend has since proven to be false by virtue of the fact that these ratios are only relevant to string length (such as the string of a monochord), and not to hammer weight.[48][49] However, it may be that Pythagoras was indeed responsible for discovering these properties of string length. Pythagoreans elaborated on a theory of numbers, the exact meaning of which is still debated among scholars. Another belief attributed to Pythagoras was that of the "harmony of the spheres". Thus the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus produced a symphony.[50] Tetractys Pythagoras was also credited with devising the tetractys, the triangular figure of four rows, which add up to the perfect number, ten. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the worship of the Pythagoreans, who would swear oaths by it: And the inventions were so admirable, and so divinised by those who understood them, that the members used them as forms of

oath: "By him who handed to our generation the tetractys, source of the roots of ever-flowing nature." Iamblichus, Vit. Pyth., 29 Religion and science Pythagoras' religious and scientific views were, in his opinion, inseparably interconnected. Religiously, Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became immortal. His ideas of reincarnation were influenced by ancient Greek religion. Heraclides Ponticus reports the story that Pythagoras claimed that he had lived four previous lives that he could remember in detail.[51] One of his past lives, as reported by Aulus Gellius, was as a beautiful courtesan.[52] According to Xenophanes, Pythagoras heard the cry of his dead friend in the bark of a dog.[53] Lore Pythagoras became the subject of elaborate legends surrounding his historic persona. Aristotle described Pythagoras as a wonder-worker and somewhat of a supernatural figure, attributing to him such aspects as a golden thigh, which was a sign of divinity. According to Muslim

tradition, Pythagoras was said to have been initiated by Hermes (Egyptian Thoth).[54] According to Aristotle and others' accounts, some ancients believed that he had the ability to travel through space and time, and to communicate with animals and plants.[55] An extract from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable's entry entitled "Golden Thigh": Pythagoras is said to have had a golden thigh, which he showed to Abaris, the Hyperborean priest, and exhibited in the Olympic games.[56] Another legend describes his writing on the moon: Pythagoras asserted he could write on the moon. His plan of operation was to write on a looking-glass in blood, and place it opposite the moon, when the inscription would appear photographed or reflected on the moon's disc.[57] Pythagoreans See also: Pythagoreanism

Pythagoras, the man in the center with the book, teaching music, in The School of Athens by Raphael Both Plato and Isocrates affirm that, above all else, Pythagoras was famous for leaving behind him a way of life.[58] Both Iamblichus and Porphyry give detailed accounts of the organisation of the school, although the primary interest of both writers is not historical accuracy, but rather to present Pythagoras as a divine figure, sent by the gods to benefit humankind.[59] Pythagoras set up an organization which was in some ways a school, in some ways a brotherhood (and here it should be noted that sources indicate that as well as men there were many women among the adherents of Pythagoras),[60] and in some ways a monastery. It was

based upon the religious teachings of Pythagoras and was very secretive. The adherents were bound by a vow to Pythagoras and each other, for the purpose of pursuing the religious and ascetic observances, and of studying his religious and philosophical theories. The claim that they put all their property into a common stock is perhaps only a later inference from certain Pythagorean maxims and practices.[61] As to the internal arrangements of the sect, we are informed that what was done and taught among the members was kept a profound secret towards all. Porphyry stated that this silence was "of no ordinary kind." Candidates had to pass through a period of probation, in which their powers of maintaining silence (echemythia) were especially tested, as well as their general temper, disposition, and mental capacity.[62] There were also gradations among the members themselves. It was an old Pythagorean maxim, that every thing was not to be told to every body.[63] Thus the Pythagoreans were divided into an inner circle called the mathematikoi ("learners") and an outer circle called the akousmatikoi ("listeners").[64] Iamblichus describes them in terms of esoterikoi and exoterikoi (or alternatively Pythagoreioi and Pythagoristai),[65] according to the degree of intimacy which they enjoyed with Pythagoras. Porphyry wrote "the mathematikoi learned the more detailed and exactly elaborated version of this knowledge, the

akousmatikoi (were) those who had heard only the summary headings of his (Pythagoras's) writings, without the more exact exposition." There were ascetic practices (many of which had, perhaps, a symbolic meaning) in the way of life of the sect.[66] Some represent Pythagoras as forbidding all animal food, advocating a plant-based diet, and prohibiting consumption of beans. This may have been due to the doctrine of metempsychosis.[67] Other authorities contradict the statement. According to Aristoxenus,[68] he allowed the use of all kinds of animal food except the flesh of oxen used for ploughing, and rams.[69] There is a similar discrepancy as to the prohibition of fish and beans.[70] But temperance of all kinds seems to have been urged. It is also stated that they had common meals, resembling the Spartan system, at which they met in companies of ten.[71] Considerable importance seems to have been attached to music and gymnastics in the daily exercises of the disciples. Their whole discipline is represented as encouraging a lofty serenity and self-possession, of which, there were various anecdotes in antiquity.[72] Iamblichus (apparently on the authority of Aristoxenus)[73] gives a long description of the daily routine of the members, which suggests many similarities with Sparta. The members of the sect showed a devoted attachment to each other, to the exclusion of those who did not belong to their ranks.[74] There were even stories of secret symbols, by which members

of the sect could recognise each other, even if they had never met before.[75] Influence Influence on Plato

Pythagoras, depicted as a medieval scholar in the Nuremberg Chronicle Pythagoras, or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, allegedly exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. According to R. M. Hare, this influence consists of three points: (1) The platonic Republic might be related to the idea of "a tightly organized community of like-minded thinkers", like the one established by Pythagoras in Croton. (2) There is evidence that Plato possibly took from Pythagoras the idea that

mathematics and, generally speaking, abstract thinking is a secure basis for philosophical thinking as well as "for substantial theses in science and morals". (3) Plato and Pythagoras shared a "mystical approach to the soul and its place in the material world". It is probable that both were influenced by Orphism.[76] Aristotle claimed that the philosophy of Plato closely followed the teachings of the Pythagoreans,[77] and Cicero repeats this claim: Platonem ferunt didicisse Pythagorea omnia ("They say Plato learned all things Pythagorean").[78] Bertrand Russell, in his A History of Western Philosophy, contended that the influence of Pythagoras on Plato and others was so great that he should be considered the most influential of all Western philosophers. Influence on esoteric groups Pythagoras started a secret society called the Pythagorean Brotherhood devoted to the study of mathematics. This had a great effect on future esoteric traditions, such as Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, both of which were scientific/mystical groups dedicated to the study of mathematics/geometry and logical reasoning as opposed to religious dogma. Both Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism have claimed to have evolved out of the Pythagorean Brotherhood. The mystical and occult qualities of Pythagorean mathematics are discussed in a chapter of

Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages entitled "Pythagorean Mathematics".[79]

1)

Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle), c, is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, b and athat is, a + b = c. 2) Pythagoras discovered that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations was when one day he passed blacksmiths at work, and thought that the sounds emanating from their anvils being hit were beautiful and harmonious and decided that whatever scientific law caused this to happen must be mathematical and could be applied to music. Pythagoras believed in something called the "harmony of the spheres." He believed that the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus produced a symphony 3) Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became moral. His ideas of reincarnation were influenced by ancient Greek religion. He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart. He himself claimed to have lived four lives that he could remember in detail, and heard the cry of his dead friend in the bark of a dog. 4) Pythagoras believed that the essence of being is number. Thus, being relies on stability of all things that create the universe. Things like health relied on a stable proportion of elements; too much or too little of one thing causes an imbalance that makes a being unhealthy. Pythagoras viewed thinking as the calculating with the idea numbers. 5) Pythagoras founded a philosophical and religious school in Croton (now Crotone, on the east of the heel of southern Italy) that had many followers. Pythagoras was the head of the society with an inner circle of followers known as mathematikoi. The mathematikoi lived permanently with the Society, had no personal possessions and were vegetarians. They were taught by Pythagoras himself and obeyed strict rules1) Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle), c, is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, b and athat is, a + b = c. 2) Pythagoras discovered that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations was when one

day he passed blacksmiths at work, and thought that the sounds emanating from their anvils being hit were beautiful and harmonious and decided that whatever scientific law caused this to happen must be mathematical and could be applied to music. Pythagoras believed in something called the "harmony of the spheres." He believed that the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus produced a symphony 3) Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became moral. His ideas of reincarnation were influenced by ancient Greek religion. He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart. He himself claimed to have lived four lives that he could remember in detail, and heard the cry of his dead friend in the bark of a dog. 4) Pythagoras believed that the essence of being is number. Thus, being relies on stability of all things that create the universe. Things like health relied on a stable proportion of elements; too much or too little of one thing causes an imbalance that makes a being unhealthy. Pythagoras viewed thinking as the calculating with the idea numbers. 5) Pythagoras founded a philosophical and religious school in Croton (now Crotone, on the east of the heel of southern Italy) that had many followers. Pythagoras was the head of the society with an inner circle of followers known as mathematikoi. The mathematikoi lived permanently with the Society, had no personal possessions and were vegetarians. They were taught by Pythagoras himself and obeyed strict rules

Infinity
Infinity (symbol: ) refers to something without any limit, and is a concept relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics. The English word infinity derives from Latin infinitas, which can be translated as "unboundedness", itself calqued from the Greek word apeiros, meaning "endless".[1] In mathematics, "infinity" is often treated as if it were a number (i.e., it counts or measures things: "an infinite number of terms") but it is not the same sort of number as the real numbers. In number systems incorporating infinitesimals, the reciprocal of an infinitesimal is an infinite number, i.e., a number greater than any real number. Georg Cantor formalized many ideas related to infinity and infinite sets during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the theory he developed,

there are infinite sets of different sizes (called cardinalities).[2] For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the infinite set of real numbers is uncountable.[3]

Contents

1 History o 1.1 Early Greek o 1.2 Early Indian 2 Mathematics o 2.1 Infinity symbol o 2.2 Calculus 2.2.1 Real analysis 2.2.2 Complex analysis o 2.3 Nonstandard analysis o 2.4 Set theory 2.4.1 Cardinality of the continuum o 2.5 Geometry and topology o 2.6 Fractals o 2.7 Mathematics without infinity 3 Physics o 3.1 Theoretical applications of physical infinity o 3.2 Cosmology 4 Logic 5 Computing 6 Arts and cognitive sciences 7 See also 8 References o 8.1 Notes o 8.2 Bibliography 9 External links

History
Main article: Infinity (philosophy)

Ancient cultures had various ideas about the nature of infinity. The ancient Indians and Greeks, unable to codify infinity in terms of a formalized mathematical system, approached infinity as a philosophical concept.

Early Greek
The earliest recorded idea of infinity comes from Anaximander, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus. He used the word apeiron which means infinite or limitless.[4] However, the earliest attestable accounts of mathematical infinity come from Zeno of Elea (c. 490 BCE? c. 430 BCE?), a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, described by Bertrand Russell as "immeasurably subtle and profound". In accordance with the traditional view of Aristotle, the Hellenistic Greeks generally preferred to distinguish the potential infinity from the actual infinity; for example, instead of saying that there are an infinity of primes, Euclid prefers instead to say that there are more prime numbers than contained in any given collection of prime numbers (Elements, Book IX, Proposition 20). However, recent readings of the Archimedes Palimpsest have hinted that Archimedes at least had an intuition about actual infinite quantities.

Early Indian
The Isha Upanishad of the Yajurveda (c. 4th to 3rd century BCE?) states that "if you remove a part from infinity or add a part to infinity, still what remains is infinity". The Indian mathematical text Surya Prajnapti (c. 3rd4th century BCE) classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable, and infinite. Each of these was further subdivided into three orders:

Enumerable: lowest, intermediate, and highest Innumerable: nearly innumerable, truly innumerable, and innumerably innumerable Infinite: nearly infinite, truly infinite, infinitely infinite

In the Indian work on the theory of sets, two basic types of infinite numbers are distinguished. On both physical and ontological grounds, a distinction was made between asakhyta ("countless, innumerable") and ananta ("endless, unlimited"), between rigidly bounded and loosely bounded infinities.

Mathematics

Infinity symbol
Main article: Infinity symbol

The infinity symbol

(sometimes called the lemniscate) is a mathematical symbol representing the concept of infinity.

The symbol is encoded in Unicode at U+221E

INFINITY

(HTML: ∞ ∞) and in LaTeX as \infty.

It was introduced in 1655 by John Wallis,[5][6] and, since its introduction, has also been used outside mathematics in modern mysticism[7] and literary symbology.[8]

Calculus
Leibniz, one of the co-inventors of infinitesimal calculus, speculated widely about infinite numbers and their use in mathematics. To Leibniz, both infinitesimals and infinite quantities were ideal entities, not of the same nature as appreciable quantities, but enjoying the same properties.[9][10]
Real analysis

In real analysis, the symbol , called "infinity", denotes an unbounded limit. means that x grows without bound, and means the value of x is decreasing without bound. If f(t) 0 for every t, then

means that f(t) does not bound a finite area from means that the area under f(t) is infinite.

to

means that the total area under f(t) is finite, and equals

Infinity is also used to describe infinite series:

means that the sum of the infinite series converges to some real value

means that the sum of the infinite series diverges in the specific sense that the partial sums grow without bound.

Infinity is often used not only to define a limit but as a value in the affinely extended real number system. Points labeled and can be added to the topological space of the real numbers, producing the two-point compactification of the

real numbers. Adding algebraic properties to this gives us the extended real numbers. We can also treat and the same, leading to the one-point compactification of the real numbers, which is the real projective line. Projective geometry also introduces a line at infinity in plane geometry, and so forth for higher dimensions.
Complex analysis

as

As in real analysis, in complex analysis the symbol , called "infinity", denotes an unsigned infinite limit. means that the magnitude of x grows beyond any assigned value. A point labeled can be added to the complex plane as a topological space giving the one-point compactification of the complex plane. When this is done, the resulting space is a one-dimensional complex manifold, or Riemann surface, called the extended complex plane or the Riemann sphere. Arithmetic operations similar to those given below for the extended real numbers can also be defined, though there is no distinction in the signs (therefore one exception is that infinity cannot be added to itself). On the other hand, this kind of infinity enables division by zero, namely for any nonzero complex number z. In this context it is often useful to consider meromorphic functions as maps into the Riemann sphere taking the value of at the poles. The domain of a complex-valued function may be extended to include the point at infinity as well. One important example of such functions is the group of Mbius transformations.

Nonstandard analysis
The original formulation of infinitesimal calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz used infinitesimal quantities. In the twentieth century, it was shown that this treatment could be put on a rigorous footing through various logical systems, including smooth infinitesimal analysis and nonstandard analysis. In the latter, infinitesimals are invertible, and their inverses are infinite numbers. The infinities in this sense are part of a hyperreal field; there is no equivalence between them as with the Cantorian transfinites. For example, if H is an infinite number, then H + H = 2H and H + 1 are distinct infinite numbers. This approach to non-standard calculus is fully developed in Howard Jerome Keisler's book (see below).

Set theory
Main articles: Cardinality and Ordinal number

One-to-one correspondence between infinite set and proper subset

A different form of "infinity" are the ordinal and cardinal infinities of set theory. Georg Cantor developed a system of transfinite numbers, in which the first transfinite cardinal is aleph-null , the cardinality of the set of natural numbers. This modern mathematical conception of the quantitative infinite developed in the late nineteenth century from work by Cantor, Gottlob Frege, Richard Dedekind and others, using the idea of collections, or sets. Dedekind's approach was essentially to adopt the idea of one-to-one correspondence as a standard for comparing the size of sets, and to reject the view of Galileo (which derived from Euclid) that the whole cannot be the same size as the part. An infinite set can simply be defined as one having the same size as at least one of its proper parts; this notion of infinity is called Dedekind infinite. The diagram gives an example: viewing lines as infinite sets of points, the left half of the lower blue line can be mapped in a one-to-one manner (green correspondences) to the higher blue line, and, in turn, to the whole lower blue line (red correspondences); therefore the whole lower blue line and its left half have the same cardinality, i.e. "size". Cantor defined two kinds of infinite numbers: ordinal numbers and cardinal numbers. Ordinal numbers may be identified with well-ordered sets, or counting carried on to any stopping point, including points after an infinite number have already been counted. Generalizing finite and the ordinary infinite sequences which are maps from the positive integers leads to mappings from ordinal numbers, and transfinite sequences. Cardinal numbers define the size of sets, meaning how many members they contain, and can be standardized by choosing the first ordinal number of a certain size to represent the cardinal number of that size. The smallest ordinal infinity is that of the positive integers, and any set which has the cardinality of the integers is countably infinite. If a set is too large to be put in one to one correspondence with the positive integers, it is called uncountable. Cantor's views prevailed and modern mathematics accepts actual infinity. Certain extended number systems, such as the hyperreal numbers, incorporate the ordinary (finite) numbers and infinite numbers of different sizes.
Cardinality of the continuum
Main article: Cardinality of the continuum

One of Cantor's most important results was that the cardinality of the continuum is greater than that of the natural numbers ; that is, there are more real numbers R than natural numbers N. Namely, Cantor showed that (see Cantor's diagonal argument or Cantor's first uncountability proof). The continuum hypothesis states that there is no cardinal number between the cardinality of the reals and the cardinality of the natural numbers, that is, (see Beth one). However, this hypothesis can neither be proved nor disproved within the widely accepted ZermeloFraenkel set theory, even assuming the Axiom of Choice.

Cardinal arithmetic can be used to show not only that the number of points in a real number line is equal to the number of points in any segment of that line, but that this is equal to the number of points on a plane and, indeed, in any finitedimensional space.

The first three steps of a fractal construction whose limit is a space-filling curve, showing that there are as many points in a one-dimensional line as in a two-dimensional square.

The first of these results is apparent by considering, for instance, the tangent function, which provides a one-to-one correspondence between the interval (/2, /2) and R (see also Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel). The second result was proved by Cantor in 1878, but only became intuitively apparent in 1890, when Giuseppe Peano introduced the space-filling curves, curved lines that twist and turn enough to fill the whole of any square, or cube, or hypercube, or finite-dimensional space. These curves can be used to define a one-to-one correspondence between the points in the side of a square and those in the square.

Geometry and topology

Main article: Dimension (vector space)

Infinite-dimensional spaces are widely used in geometry and topology, particularly as classifying spaces, notably EilenbergMacLane spaces. Common examples are the infinite-dimensional complex projective space K(Z,2) and the infinite-dimensional real projective space K(Z/2Z,1).

Fractals
The structure of a fractal object is reiterated in its magnifications. Fractals can be magnified indefinitely without losing their structure and becoming "smooth"; they have infinite perimeterssome with infinite, and others with finite surface areas. One such fractal curve with an infinite perimeter and finite surface area is the Koch snowflake.

Mathematics without infinity

Leopold Kronecker was skeptical of the notion of infinity and how his fellow mathematicians were using it in 1870s and 1880s. This skepticism was developed in the philosophy of mathematics called finitism, an extreme form of the philosophical and mathematical schools of constructivism and intuitionism.[11]

Physics
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In physics, approximations of real numbers are used for continuous measurements and natural numbers are used for discrete measurements (i.e. counting). It is therefore assumed by physicists that no measurable quantity could have an infinite value,[citation needed] for instance by taking an infinite value in an extended real number system, or by requiring the counting of an infinite number of events. It is for example presumed impossible for any body to have infinite mass or infinite energy. Concepts of infinite things such as an infinite plane wave exist, but there are no experimental means to generate them.[citation needed]

Theoretical applications of physical infinity

The practice of refusing infinite values for measurable quantities does not come from a priori or ideological motivations, but rather from more methodological and pragmatic motivations.[citation needed] One of the needs of any physical and scientific theory is to give usable formulas that correspond to or at least approximate reality. As an example if any object of infinite gravitational mass were to exist, any usage of the formula to calculate the gravitational force would lead to an infinite result, which would be of no benefit since the result would be always the same regardless of the position and the mass of the other object. The formula would be useful neither to compute the force between two objects of finite mass nor to compute their motions. If an infinite mass object were to exist, any object of finite mass would be attracted with infinite force (and hence acceleration) by the infinite mass object, which is not what we can observe in reality. Sometimes infinite result of a physical quantity may mean that the theory being used to compute the result may be approaching the point where it fails. This may help to indicate the limitations of a theory. This point of view does not mean that infinity cannot be used in physics. For convenience's sake, calculations, equations, theories and approximations often use infinite series, unbounded functions, etc., and may involve infinite quantities. Physicists however require that the end result be physically meaningful. In quantum field theory infinities arise which need to be interpreted in such a way as to lead to a physically meaningful result, a process called renormalization. However, there are some theoretical circumstances where the end result is infinity. One example is the singularity in the description of black holes. Some solutions of the equations of the general theory of relativity allow for finite mass distributions of zero size, and thus infinite density. This is an example of what is called a mathematical singularity, or a point where a physical theory breaks down. This does not necessarily mean that physical infinities exist; it may mean simply that the theory is incapable of describing the situation properly. Two other examples occur in inverse-square force laws of the gravitational force equation of Newtonian gravity and Coulomb's law of electrostatics. At r=0 these equations evaluate to infinities.

Cosmology
Parts of this article (those related to Planck) are outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2013)

In 1584, the Italian philosopher and astronomer Giordano Bruno proposed an unbounded universe in On the Infinite Universe and Worlds: "Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds." Cosmologists have long sought to discover whether infinity exists in our physical universe: Are there an infinite number of stars? Does the universe have infinite volume? Does space "go on forever"? This is an open question of cosmology. Note that the question of being infinite is logically separate from the question of having boundaries. The twodimensional surface of the Earth, for example, is finite, yet has no edge. By travelling in a straight line one will eventually return to the exact spot one started from. The universe, at least in principle, might have a similar topology. If so, one might eventually return to one's starting point after travelling in a straight line through the universe for long enough. If, on the other hand, the universe were not curved like a sphere but had a flat topology, it could be both unbounded and infinite. The curvature of the universe can be measured through multipole moments in the spectrum of the cosmic background radiation. As to date, analysis of the radiation patterns recorded by the WMAP spacecraft hints that the universe has a flat topology. This would be consistent with an infinite physical universe. The Planck spacecraft launched in 2009 is expected to record the cosmic background radiation with 10 times higher precision, and will give more insight into the question of whether the universe is infinite or not.

Logic
In logic an infinite regress argument is "a distinctively philosophical kind of argument purporting to show that a thesis is defective because it generates an infinite series when either (form A) no such series exists or (form B) were it to exist, the thesis would lack the role (e.g., of justification) that it is supposed to play."[12]

Computing
The IEEE floating-point standard (IEEE 754) specifies the positive and negative infinity values. These are defined as the result of arithmetic overflow, division by zero, and other exceptional operations. Some programming languages, such as Java[13] and J,[14] allow the programmer an explicit access to the positive and negative infinity values as language constants. These can be used as greatest and least elements, as they compare

(respectively) greater than or less than all other values. They are useful as sentinel values in algorithms involving sorting, searching, or windowing. In languages that do not have greatest and least elements, but do allow overloading of relational operators, it is possible for a programmer to create the greatest and least elements. In languages that do not provide explicit access to such values from the initial state of the program, but do implement the floating point data type, the infinity values might still be accessible and usable as the result of certain operations.

Arts and cognitive sciences

Perspective artwork utilizes the concept of imaginary vanishing points, or points at infinity, located at an infinite distance from the observer. This allows artists to create paintings that realistically render space, distances, and forms.[15] Artist M. C. Escher is specifically known for employing the concept of infinity in his work in this and other ways. Cognitive scientist George Lakoff considers the concept of infinity in mathematics and the sciences as a metaphor. This view is based on the basic metaphor of infinity (BMI), defined as the ever-increasing sequence <1,2,3,...>.