Concept
Infinity (philosophy)
Overview
philosophical concept
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Infinity (philosophy) is discussed.
1. Infinity, in its original Intention, attributed to Space, Duration, and Number. He that would know what kind of idea it is to which we give the name of INFINITY, cannot do it better than by considering to what infinity is by the mind more immediately attributed; and then how the mind comes to frame it. FINITE and INFINITE seem to me to be looked upon by the mind as the MODES OF QUANTITY, and to be attributed…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
The philosophy of the infinitesimal, as we have just seen, is mainly negative. People used to believe in it, and now they have found out their mistake. The philosophy of the infinite, on the other hand, is wholly positive. It was formerly supposed that infinite numbers, and the mathematical infinite generally, were self-contradictory.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
names the idea; states what it is
Infinity is conceived as quantitative, as the successive addition of times and spaces; identity and diversity are oneness and difference of existence as determined by space and time; substance is the underlying static substratum of qualities, and, as such, is considered after the analogy of things existing in space and through time. It must not be forgotten that Locke believed as thoroughly as Leibniz in the…
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
states what it is; names the idea
93.] Something becomes an other: this other is itself somewhat: therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on _ad infinitum._ 94.] This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity: it is only a negation of a finite: but the finite rises again the same as ever, and is never got rid of and absorbed. In other words, this infinite only expresses the _ought-to-be_ elimination of the finite. The progression to infinity…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
To begin with, it is a mistake to define the infinity of a series as "impossibility of completion by successive synthesis." The notion of infinity, as we shall see in the next lecture, is primarily a property of _classes_, and only derivatively applicable to series; classes which are infinite are given all at once by the defining property of their members, so that there is no question of "completion" or of…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Infinity (philosophy)
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Anaximander
- Georg Cantor
- Integer
- Jainism
- John Locke
- Physics (Aristotle)
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- L. E. J. Brouwer
- Anaxagoras
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Jain literature
- Augustine of Hippo
- Absolute (philosophy)
- Natural number
- Thomas Aquinas
- Potentiality and actuality
- Sense data
- Set theory
- Apeiron
- Galileo Galilei
- Thomas Hobbes
- Empirical evidence
- Aristotle
Place in the tradition
Part of Lebensphilosophie.