"Galileo observed as early as 1638 that there are precisely as many squares 1, 4, 9, 16, 25,... as are positive integers all together. This is evident from the sequences1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... , n, ... 12, 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, ..., n, ... He thus recognized the fundamental distinction between finite and infinite classes that became current in the late nineteenth century. An infinite class is one in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between the whole class and a subclass of the whole. Or, what is equivalent, there are as many things in one part of an infinite class as there are in the whole class. ...A class whose elements can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the integers 1, 2, 3, ... is said to be denumerable. All the points in any line segment, finite or infinite in length, form a non-denumerable set. A basic course in calculus starts from the theory of point sets. The distinction between denumerable and non-denumerable classes was not started by Galileo; it was observed about 1840 by Bolzano and in 1878 by Cantor. But Galileo's recognition of the cardinal property of all infinite classes makes him one of the genuine anticipators in the history of calculus. The other was Archimedes."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Eric Temple Bell, The Development of Mathematics (1940)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Infinity
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Infinity
139 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Infinity →
Related Quotes
"Should not a true understanding of life promote care for the future along with the present? This is the immediate dut…"
"In Sorbière's day, European thinkers and intellectuals of widely divergent religious and political affiliations campa…"
"On the one side were ranged the forces of hierarchy and order—Jesuits, Hobbesians, French Royal Courtiers, and High C…"
"All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite."
"Empedocles holds that the corporeal elements are four, while all the elements-including those which initiate movement…"
"Motion is supposed to belong to the class of things which are continuous; and the infinite presents itself first in t…"
"The science of nature is concerned with spatial magnitudes and motion and time, and each of these at least is necessa…"
"Some, as the Pythagoreans and Plato, make the infinite a principle in the sense of a self-subsistent substance, and n…"
"The Pythagoreans identify the infinite with the even. For this, they say, when it is cut off and shut in by the odd, …"
"Ford, there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worke…"