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In philosophy and theology, infinity is explored in articles under headings such as the Absolute, God, and Zeno's paradoxes. In Greek philosophy, for example in Anaximander, 'the Boundless' is the origin of all that is. He took the beginning or first principle to be an endless, unlimited primordial mass (ἄπειρον, apeiron).
In the philosophy of mathematics, the abstraction of actual infinity, also called completed infinity, [1] involves infinite entities as given, actual and completed objects. Since Greek antiquity , the concept of actual infinity has been a subject of debate among philosophers.
In this usage, infinity is a mathematical concept, and infinite mathematical objects can be studied, manipulated, and used just like any other mathematical object. The mathematical concept of infinity refines and extends the old philosophical concept, in particular by introducing infinitely many different sizes of infinite sets.
Philosophy of science; Infinitism is the view that knowledge may be justified by an infinite chain of reasons. It belongs to epistemology, the branch of philosophy ...
Temporal finitism is the doctrine that time is finite in the past. [clarification needed] The philosophy of Aristotle, expressed in such works as his Physics, held that although space was finite, with only void existing beyond the outermost sphere of the heavens, time was infinite.
Infinite divisibility arises in different ways in philosophy, physics, economics, order theory (a branch of mathematics), and probability theory (also a branch of mathematics). One may speak of infinite divisibility, or the lack thereof, of matter , space , time , money , or abstract mathematical objects such as the continuum .
Zeno devised these paradoxes to support his teacher Parmenides's philosophy of monism, which posits that despite our sensory experiences, reality is singular and unchanging. The paradoxes famously challenge the notions of plurality (the existence of many things), motion, space, and time by suggesting they lead to logical contradictions .
The absolute infinite (symbol: Ω), in context often called "absolute", is an extension of the idea of infinity proposed by mathematician Georg Cantor.It can be thought of as a number that is bigger than any other conceivable or inconceivable quantity, either finite or transfinite.