Posted on August 8, 2016
Have you ever seen the symbol for infinity?
Can you see why Infinity Day is the eighth day of the eighth month?
This holiday was first thought up by philosopher and writer Jean-Pierre Ady Fenyo, in 1987. He promoted his holiday a bit in New York, where he was living at the time, and later in a few other cities in the U.S. and Europe. It's supposed to be a day to promote philosophy for all.
Infinity is a concept of being without limit. The example often given is the counting numbers...No matter how large your number is, you can always make it larger by merely adding 1 to it.
(By the way, I have a bit of a problem with the end of the 3-minute video I linked to, above. I think that the speaker wanted to end on a positive, feel-good note, but he said something like, at any given moment, we have access to infinite choices. I simply do not think that is at all true. I wonder what other mathematicians, as well as scientists and philosophers, would say about people having infinite choices...?)
- I always feel like I am approaching infinity when I watch a Mandelbrot Set zoom. This one and this one are good examples – and this one in 3-D – but there are many more!
- Other examples of times we use the word "infinite" include the Mobius strip...
...and the theoretical possibility of infinite universes.
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