Infinity in Physics

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond ()
Additional contact information
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond: University of Nice-Côte d’Azur

A chapter in Imagine Math 7, 2020, pp 265-276 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Is it necessary, in order to justify a physicist’s claim to deal with the infinite—a privilege that might seem reserved to the mathematician and the philosopher—to recall that physical thought has long been linked to the infinite? Archimedes (the first physicist?), and later Galileo, who devoted many pages of the Discorsi to it [1] offer two examples among others of a fundamental reflection on the nature of infinity based on the physicist’s concerns about material reality, despite the finiteness of its appearances. Nevertheless, it is too often accepted that infinity should not be part of the conceptual arsenal of physics in its own right, since “there is nothing infinite in nature”. The appearance of infinity in a physical theory would then signal, if not bankruptcy, at least a risky and perhaps abusive extrapolation of its validity. Here is a recent version of this argument:

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-42653-8_16

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030426538

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-42653-8_16

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().