Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His ApostlesCocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Religion
Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles
Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Christianity; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Philosophy, Ancient
The result thus attained by considering abstract quantity is
corroborated by considering concrete and discrete quantities. Such
expressions as _infinite sphere, radius, parallelogram, line,_ and so
forth, are self-contradictory. A sphere is limited by its own periphery,
and a radius by the centre and circumference of its circle. A
parallelogram of infinite altitude is impossible, because the limit of
its altitude is assigned in the side which must be parallel to its base
in order to constitute it a parallelogram. In brief, all figuration is
limitation. The contradiction in the term _infinite line_ is not quite
so obvious, but can readily be made apparent. Objectively, a line is
only the termination of a surface, and a surface the termination of a
solid; hence a line can not exist apart from an extended quantity, nor
an infinite line apart from an infinite quantity. But as this term has
just been shown to be self-contradictory, an infinite line can not exist
objectively at all. Again, every line is extension in one dimension;
hence a mathematical quantity, hence mensurable, hence finite; you must
therefore, deny that a line is a quantity, or else affirm that it is
finite.
The same conclusion is forced upon us, if from geometry we turn to
arithmetic. The phrases _infinite number, infinite series, infinite
process_, and so forth, are all contradictory when literally construed.
Number is a relation among separate unities or integers, which,
considered objectively as independent of our cognitive powers, must
constitute an exact sum; and this exactitude, or synthetic totality, is
limitation. If considered subjectively in the mode of its cognition, a
number is infinite only in the sense that it is beyond the power of our
imagination or conception, which is an abuse of the term. In either case
the totality is fixed; that is, finite. So, too, of _series_ and
_process_. Since every series involves a succession of terms or numbers,
and every process a succession of steps or stages, the notion of series
and process plainly involves that of _number_, and must be rigorously
dissociated from the idea of infinity. At any one step, at any one term,
the number attained is determinate, hence finite. The fact that, by the
law of the series or of the process, _we_ may continue the operation _as
long as we please_, does not justify the application of the term
infinite to the operation itself; if any thing is infinite, it is the
will which continues the operation, which is absurd if said of human
wills.
Consequently, the attribute of infinity is not predicable either of
'diminution without limit,' 'augmentation without limit,' or 'endless
approximation to a fixed limit,' for these mathematical processes
continue only as we continue them, consist of steps successively
accomplished, and are limited by the very fact of this serial
incompletion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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