Watching a Magic Numbers programme on BBC4 a few years ago, set me thinking about what I make of the concept of infinity.
Infinity is a mathematical construct which I always found quite easy to comprehend and explain as far as the level of my maths teaching required. However, it seems to have turned out to be extremely useful in the modern world and major developments have arisen from its applications.
But as to infinity, it just doesn't exist in the 'real' physical universe, to my way of thinking anyway.
We say, mathematically speaking, that there are an infinite number of rabbits in Australia because we cannot physically count them. And even if they could be counted in some super-tech way, in what we now call 'real time' (an interesting term in itself), by the time we arrived at an actual number, an unmeasurable number of baby rabbits would have been born and other rabbits died!
Surely all of us know that, in reality, there are not an infinite number of rabbits rollicking around the Australian outback, so this 'infinity' is merely a mathematical aid. (And who wants the exact number anyway!!) Infinity, in this case, represents 'uncountability'.
The wonder is that scientists, in seeking to know and understand the workings of the universe, from its heights to its depths, from the largest star to the smallest particle, are aided by the devices that mathematics offers, to fathom those depths and to scale those heights.
Therein lies the wonder and the glory of both.
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.