Download or read book Paradoxes of the Infinite Routledge Revivals written by Bernard Bolzano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradoxes of the Infinite presents one of the most insightful, yet strangely unacknowledged, mathematical treatises of the 19th century: Dr Bernard Bolzano’s Paradoxien. This volume contains an adept translation of the work itself by Donald A. Steele S.J., and in addition an historical introduction, which includes a brief biography as well as an evaluation of Bolzano the mathematician, logician and physicist.
Download or read book Paradoxes of the Infinite written by Bernard Bolzano and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Infinity Causation and Paradox written by Alexander R. Pruss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infinity is paradoxical in many ways. Some paradoxes involve deterministic supertasks, such as Thomson's Lamp, where a switch is toggled an infinite number of times over a finite period of time, or the Grim Reaper, where it seems that infinitely many reapers can produce a result without doing anything. Others involve infinite lotteries. If you get two tickets from an infinite fair lottery where tickets are numbered from 1, no matter what number you saw on the first ticket, it is almost certain that the other ticket has a bigger number on it. And others center on paradoxical results in decision theory, such as the surprising observation that if you perform a sequence of fair coin flips that goes infinitely far back into the past but only finitely into the future, you can leverage information about past coin flips to predict future ones with only finitely many mistakes. Alexander R. Pruss examines this seemingly large family of paradoxes in Infinity, Causation and Paradox. He establishes that these paradoxes and numerous others all have a common structure: their most natural embodiment involves an infinite number of items causally impinging on a single output. These paradoxes, he argues, can all be resolved by embracing 'causal finitism', the view that it is impossible for a single output to have an infinite causal history. Throughout the book, Pruss exposits such paradoxes, defends causal finitism at length, and considers connections with the philosophy of physics (where causal finitism favors but does not require discretist theories of space and time) and the philosophy of religion (with a cosmological argument for a first cause).
Download or read book Paradoxes of the Infinite Routledge Revivals written by Bernard Bolzano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradoxes of the Infinite presents one of the most insightful, yet strangely unacknowledged, mathematical treatises of the 19th century: Dr Bernard Bolzano’s Paradoxien. This volume contains an adept translation of the work itself by Donald A. Steele S.J., and in addition an historical introduction, which includes a brief biography as well as an evaluation of Bolzano the mathematician, logician and physicist.
Download or read book The Book of Sand written by Jorge Luis Borges and published by Dutton Books. This book was released on 1977 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen new stories by the celebrated writer, including two which he considers his greatest achievements to date, artfully blend elements from many literary geares.
Download or read book Approaching Infinity written by M. Huemer and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approaching Infinity addresses seventeen paradoxes of the infinite, most of which have no generally accepted solutions. The book addresses these paradoxes using a new theory of infinity, which entails that an infinite series is uncompletable when it requires something to possess an infinite intensive magnitude. Along the way, the author addresses the nature of numbers, sets, geometric points, and related matters. The book addresses the need for a theory of infinity, and reviews both old and new theories of infinity. It discussing the purposes of studying infinity and the troubles with traditional approaches to the problem, and concludes by offering a solution to some existing paradoxes.
Download or read book Infinity and Paradox written by Manuel Agrião and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-09-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a journey that begins upstream of existence itself and ends with the contemplative acceptance of the human condition, in particular, the subjective integrity of each one. It is a journey that goes from the absolute to the relative, whose driving force is telescopic and invites the reader to make several intermediate stops to reflect on suffering, reality, identity, art, and more. There are 252 texts divided into 20 chapters that help to form a whatever perspective on the Infinite. This is a book of understandings to use as a shoe sole.
Download or read book The Infinite Book written by John D. Barrow and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a thousand years, infinity has proven to be a difficult and illuminating challenge for mathematicians and theologians. It certainly is the strangest idea that humans have ever thought. Where did it come from and what is it telling us about our Universe? Can there actually be infinities? Is matter infinitely divisible into ever-smaller pieces? But infinity is also the place where things happen that don't. All manner of strange paradoxes and fantasies characterize an infinite universe. If our Universe is infinite then an infinite number of exact copies of you are, at this very moment, reading an identical sentence on an identical planet somewhere else in the Universe. Now Infinity is the darling of cutting edge research, the measuring stick used by physicists, cosmologists, and mathematicians to determine the accuracy of their theories. From the paradox of Zeno’s arrow to string theory, Cambridge professor John Barrow takes us on a grand tour of this most elusive of ideas and describes with clarifying subtlety how this subject has shaped, and continues to shape, our very sense of the world in which we live. The Infinite Book is a thoroughly entertaining and completely accessible account of the biggest subject of them all–infinity.
Download or read book On the Brink of Paradox written by Agustin Rayo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to awe-inspiring ideas at the brink of paradox: infinities of different sizes, time travel, probability and measure theory, and computability theory. This book introduces the reader to awe-inspiring issues at the intersection of philosophy and mathematics. It explores ideas at the brink of paradox: infinities of different sizes, time travel, probability and measure theory, computability theory, the Grandfather Paradox, Newcomb's Problem, the Principle of Countable Additivity. The goal is to present some exceptionally beautiful ideas in enough detail to enable readers to understand the ideas themselves (rather than watered-down approximations), but without supplying so much detail that they abandon the effort. The philosophical content requires a mind attuned to subtlety; the most demanding of the mathematical ideas require familiarity with college-level mathematics or mathematical proof. The book covers Cantor's revolutionary thinking about infinity, which leads to the result that some infinities are bigger than others; time travel and free will, decision theory, probability, and the Banach-Tarski Theorem, which states that it is possible to decompose a ball into a finite number of pieces and reassemble the pieces so as to get two balls that are each the same size as the original. Its investigation of computability theory leads to a proof of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which yields the amazing result that arithmetic is so complex that no computer could be programmed to output every arithmetical truth and no falsehood. Each chapter is followed by an appendix with answers to exercises. A list of recommended reading points readers to more advanced discussions. The book is based on a popular course (and MOOC) taught by the author at MIT.
Download or read book The Annotated Turing written by Charles Petzold and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-06-16 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Programming Legend Charles Petzold unlocks the secrets of the extraordinary and prescient 1936 paper by Alan M. Turing Mathematician Alan Turing invented an imaginary computer known as the Turing Machine; in an age before computers, he explored the concept of what it meant to be computable, creating the field of computability theory in the process, a foundation of present-day computer programming. The book expands Turing’s original 36-page paper with additional background chapters and extensive annotations; the author elaborates on and clarifies many of Turing’s statements, making the original difficult-to-read document accessible to present day programmers, computer science majors, math geeks, and others. Interwoven into the narrative are the highlights of Turing’s own life: his years at Cambridge and Princeton, his secret work in cryptanalysis during World War II, his involvement in seminal computer projects, his speculations about artificial intelligence, his arrest and prosecution for the crime of "gross indecency," and his early death by apparent suicide at the age of 41.
Download or read book Infinity written by Ian Stewart and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Stewart considers the concept of infinity and the profound role it plays in mathematics, logic, physics, cosmology, and philosophy. He shows that working with infinity is not just an abstract, intellectual exercise, and analyses its important practical everyday applications.
Download or read book Paradoxes and the Infinite written by Graham Flegg and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Understanding the Infinite written by Shaughan Lavine and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible history and philosophical commentary on our notion of infinity. How can the infinite, a subject so remote from our finite experience, be an everyday tool for the working mathematician? Blending history, philosophy, mathematics, and logic, Shaughan Lavine answers this question with exceptional clarity. Making use of the mathematical work of Jan Mycielski, he demonstrates that knowledge of the infinite is possible, even according to strict standards that require some intuitive basis for knowledge. Praise for Understanding the Infinite “Understanding the Infinite is a remarkable blend of mathematics, modern history, philosophy, and logic, laced with refreshing doses of common sense. It is a potted history of, and a philosophical commentary on, the modern notion of infinity as formalized in axiomatic set theory . . . An amazingly readable [book] given the difficult subject matter. Most of all, it is an eminently sensible book. Anyone who wants to explore the deep issues surrounding the concept of infinity . . . will get a great deal of pleasure from it.” —Ian Stewart, New Scientist “How, in a finite world, does one obtain any knowledge about the infinite? Lavine argues that intuitions about the infinite derive from facts about the finite mathematics of indefinitely large size . . . The issues are delicate, but the writing is crisp and exciting, the arguments original. This book should interest readers whether philosophically, historically, or mathematically inclined, and large parts are within the grasp of the general reader. Highly recommended.” —D. V. Feldman, Choice
Download or read book Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes written by Bryan Bunch and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stimulating, thought-provoking analysis of the most interesting intellectual inconsistencies in mathematics, physics, and language, including being led astray by algebra (De Morgan's paradox). 1982 edition.
Download or read book Paradoxes of the Infinite written by Bernard Bolzano and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Vicious Circles and Infinity written by Patrick Hughes and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1978 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Zeno s Paradoxes written by Wesley C. Salmon and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reprint of the Bobbs-Merrill edition of 1970. These essays lead the reader through the land of the wonderful shrinking genie to the warehouse where the infinity machines are kept. By careful examination of a lamp that is switched on and off infinitely many times, or the workings of a machine that prints out an infinite decimal expansion of pi, we begin to understand how it is possible for Achilles to overtake the tortoise. The concepts that form the basis of modern science---space, time, motion, change, infinity---are examined and explored in this edition. Includes an updated bibliography.
