Encounters with Infinity
Encounters with Infinity

Author: Michael Van Laanen

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2002-02

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1553692144

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The original title of this manuscript was Pages - A Voyage to Infinity. It's kinda like Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass; a collection of poems with an underlying mystical theme. My dissertation is a kaleidoscope puzzle of images and thoughts and concepts and ideas taken from mysticism, science, logic, and mathematics. The end result, as the puzzle pieces are linked together, is a new portrait of Number. The reader is challenged to solve a conceptual picture puzzle using the chaotic scattering of puzzle pieces set forth in the thesis. Some of the pieces challenge established ideas. Some of the pieces are decoys leading to dead ends. Some are background. Others are transition pieces. And, there are pieces that give the reader glimpses of me, the writ er of this thesis. So, exact ly what is infinit y? As the pieces of the puzzle are put together a new concept of infinity emerges, a concept that may be of interest to the mystics, the philosopher, the quantum physicist, and mathematicians who are open to a new window through which to view reality.

Infinity
Infinity

Author: Ian Stewart

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0198755236

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Ian Stewart considers the concept of infinity and the profound role it plays in mathematics, logic, physics, cosmology, and philosophy. He shows that working with infinity is not just an abstract, intellectual exercise, and analyses its important practical everyday applications.

Naming Infinity
Naming Infinity

Author: Loren Graham

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-03-31

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0674032934

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In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

Formless Infinity
Formless Infinity

Author: Riccardo Lombardi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-16

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1317395123

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In contemporary psychoanalysis, a key concept and aim of clinical practice is to distinguish the boundaries of any mental state. Without this boundary-setting, the patient has nothing but the 'formless infinite' of primitive mental states. Formless Infinity: Clinical Explorations of Matte Blanco and Bion draws on the work of these two authors to explore how analysts can work with patients to reveal, understand and ultimately contain their primitive mental states. Riccardo Lombardi discusses the core concepts of the unconscious, the role of the body in analysis, time and death. He displays the clinical implications of Matte Blanco’s theoretical extension of Freud’s theory of the unconscious, presenting numerous clinical examples of working with psychosis and other severe pathologies. Formless Infinity, a stimulating teaching text for students, trainers and seasoned mental health practitioners, is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists. It is particularly recommended to analysts interested in widening the scope of the analytic practice by exploring the functioning of the deep unconscious, primitive mental states, psychosomatic pathologies and psychotic conditions.

Count to Infinity
Count to Infinity

Author: John C. Wright

Publisher: Tor Books

Published: 2017-12-26

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1466882816

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Count to Infinity is John C. Wright's spectacular conclusion to the thought-provoking hard science fiction Eschaton Sequence, exploring future history and human evolution. An epic space opera finale worthy of the scope and wonder of The Eschaton Sequence: Menelaus Montrose is locked in a final battle of wits, bullets, and posthuman intelligence with Ximen del Azarchel for the fate of humanity in the far future. The alien monstrosities of Ain at long last are revealed, their hidden past laid bare, along with the reason for their brutal treatment of Man and all the species seeded throughout the galaxy. And they have still one more secret that could upend everything Montrose has fought for and lived so long to achieve. The Eschaton Sequence #1 Count to a Trillion #2 The Hermetic Millennia #3 The Judge of Ages #4 The Architect of Aeons #5 The Vindication of Man At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Brief History of Infinity
A Brief History of Infinity

Author: Paolo Zellini

Publisher: Penguin Global

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13:

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In A Brief History of Infinity, the infinite in all its forms - viewed from the perspective of mathematicians, philosophers, and theologians - is explored, as Zellini strives to explain this fundamental principle. What is the difference between trueand false infinity? How might we explain away the puzzle of Zeno's paradox? And how is the concept of infinity helping us as we wrestle with the fundamental uncertainties of the quantum world? Paolo Zellini shows that the concept of the infinite is a multifaceted one, and eloquently demonstrates the manner in which humanity has attempted to comprehend that concept for millenia.

Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity
Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity

Author: Graham Oppy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-04-03

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1139455117

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This book is an exploration of philosophical questions about infinity. Graham Oppy examines how the infinite lurks everywhere, both in science and in our ordinary thoughts about the world. He also analyses the many puzzles and paradoxes that follow in the train of the infinite. Even simple notions, such as counting, adding and maximising present serious difficulties. Other topics examined include the nature of space and time, infinities in physical science, infinities in theories of probability and decision, the nature of part/whole relations, mathematical theories of the infinite, and infinite regression and principles of sufficient reason.

Infinity and the Mind
Infinity and the Mind

Author: Rudy Rucker

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-07-23

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0691191255

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A dynamic exploration of infinity In Infinity and the Mind, Rudy Rucker leads an excursion to that stretch of the universe he calls the “Mindscape,” where he explores infinity in all its forms: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, theological and mundane. Using cartoons, puzzles, and quotations to enliven his text, Rucker acquaints us with staggeringly advanced levels of infinity, delves into the depths beneath daily awareness, and explains Kurt Gödel’s belief in the possibility of robot consciousness. In the realm of infinity, mathematics, science, and logic merge with the fantastic. By closely examining the paradoxes that arise, we gain profound insights into the human mind, its powers, and its limitations. This Princeton Science Library edition includes a new preface by the author.

Fictions of Infinity
Fictions of Infinity

Author: Martin Riedelsheimer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 3110712407

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This study traces the connection of infinity and Levinasian ethics in 21st-century fiction. It tackles the paradox of how infinity can be (re-)presented in the finite space between the covers of a book and finds an answer that combines conceptual metaphor theory with concepts from classical narratology and beyond, such as mise en abyme, textual circularity, intertextuality or omniscient narration. It argues that texts with such structures may be conceptualised as infinite via Lakoff and Núñez’s Basic Metaphor of Infinity. The catachrestic transfer of infinity from structure to text means that the texts themselves are understood to be infinite. Taking its cue from the central role of the infinite in Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics, the function of such ‘fictions of infinity’ turns out to be ethical: infinite textuality disrupts reading patterns and calls into question the reader’s spontaneity to interpret. This hypothesis is put to the test in detailed readings of four 21st-century novels, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods, Ian McEwan’s Saturday and John Banville’s The Infinities. This book thus combines ethical criticism with structural aesthetics to uncover ethical potential in fiction.