RE: Actual infinities.
October 17, 2017 at 1:24 pm
(This post was last modified: October 17, 2017 at 1:27 pm by RoadRunner79.)
(October 17, 2017 at 1:10 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(October 17, 2017 at 12:58 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: No... that is what is referred to as a potential infinity.
Mathematicians (and, by extension, physicists) do not make that distinction:
Quote:Actual infinity is the idea that numbers, or some other type of mathematical object, can form an actual, completed totality; namely, a set. Hence, in the philosophy of mathematics, the abstraction of actual infinity involves the acceptance of infinite entities, such as the set of all natural numbers or an infinite sequence of rational numbers, as given objects. This is contrasted with potential infinity, in which a non-terminating process (such as "add 1 to the previous number") produces an unending "infinite" sequence of results, but each individual result is finite and is achieved in a finite number of steps.
There is no distinction between actual and potential infinity found in modern mathematics. Instead, infinite sets are assumed to exist in the axiomatic approach of the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_infinity
You started by trying to make the distinction in calling it an actual infinity! Now you are trying to slip away from it?
Have you figured out what your set of infinity is yet (defined it)?
And if you can apply infinity without any distinction are you really describing or saying anything at all?
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. - Alexander Vilenkin
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther