Eastern Vs Western Views

James D’Autrechy

Eastern vs. Western Views of Infinity When looking at the works of the philosophers from the eastern and western world, the views that each culture had of infinity varied substantially. However within both the eastern and western sects the philosophers tended to have highly similar ideologies, shown in the case of Aristotle and Al-Kindi, and the Jainists and Taoists in India and China. While there are some stark differences in the eastern views versus the western views, especially regarding the existence of an actual infinity, there are also some similarities that show up in each approach to infinity such as the application of infinity in mathematics. When looking at infinity, Aristotle made a strict distinction that there was no such thing as an actual or completed infinity, but instead there were only instances that appeared to infinite but were

This strong belief came from the popular Greek philosophy that there were two things in the world, the material and the immaterial. In both cases Aristotle claimed against the existence of actual infinity, declaring that it cannot be a material body as there is only a finite amount of elements and it cannot be immaterial as the concept of infinity did not work with the mathematical theories the Greeks had available at the time. As Aristotle was one of the leading Greek philosophers of all times, the existence of actual infinity was denied largely throughout the Western world, even when discussed by the Arabian Al-Kindi hundreds of years later. On the other hand, Eastern philosophies did not shy away from the idea of actual infinity and instead embraced the possibility. Beliefs of the Taoists were vaguely explained in Tao Te Ching, where the Tao itself was seen as an infinite and eternal entity. Unlike the