Ancient Greeks 'Attempts To Understand The Concept Of Infinity'

The Start of Infinity

This article briefly discusses the journey of the attempts to understand the concept of infinity. Ancient civilizations did not display having knowledge of conceptualizing infinity, but of course from the time people began to think about the world they lived in, questions about infinity arose. Ancient cultures did not define infinity as does modern mathematics but instead approached infinity as a philosophical concept. During the development of mathematics and science, the early Greeks came across the problem of infinity. Questions emerged quickly for example can one continue to divide matter into smaller fragments? Mathematicians began to decipher and attempt to understand and most importantly explain the concept of infinity, but it led to

Anaximander of Miletus, who was a student of Thales, was the first known philosopher to work in abstract rather than natural. He claimed that the items of the universe were apeiron, which means boundless or infinite [3]. Aristotle did not detest infinity but rather proposed that there are two types of infinity potential infinity and actual infinity. The potential infinite is a group of numbers or things that continue without terminating. The group could be going on or repeating itself over and over again with no recognizable ending point. Potential infinity is when one can keep adding or subdividing without end but never actually reaching infinity. It is an endless process that at any point along the way is finite. Actual infinity is viewed as completed totality. At the same time Aristotle denied that there is anything infinite and that actual infinity cannot exist [4]. According to Aristotle the set of natural numbers is potentially infinite because there is no largest natural number. He denied that the set is infinite because it does not exist as one finished thing