Thinking about Infinity

Sitting at a computer, listening to Willie Nelson on Pandora.com, and thinking about infinity. Not bad.

Even though I got through college basically skipping math and science, I still have always spent time thinking about the kinds of things that math supposedly holds the answers to. Like infinity.

I like the idea of infinity because the idea is one of those things that that make really smart people crazy and less smart people invent wonderful stories like god, the big bang, and black holes.

So, a couple of weeks ago I was in Oceanside, Calif. with Gail, my wife, and Muriel, my mother in law. We stayed at a fancy condo and it came with books and sure enough, there was a book about infinity. It got my attention.

The book was A Brief History of Infinity by Brian Clegg.

The book was readable (amazing) by a math illiterate like me. Clegg goes through a whole history of how people through time have dealt with the idea of infinity. Infinity's earliest references, definitions. problems, how it relates to calculus, and the key people who have tried to wrestle with the concept of infinity through the ages. He even talks about how the infinity symbol came to be.

Clegg begins each chapter with a pithy quote. Here are two of my favorites:

"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations.


"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Attributed to Albert Einstein (reputedly said at a press conference in the 1930s).

The book was a great diversion, but I need to start thinking about doing math rather than reading about it. It's time to actually register for a class. Later.