I keep having all these amazing discussions about infinity, especially about George Cantor who figured out how to count (and not count) infinity. Thinking about it drove him insane. At the time everyone thought he was insane, too. But now his concept of countable/uncountable infinitys is basically essential learning in advanced math classes. Anyway, my friend Jess shared this poem with me and I loved it so I wanted to share it with you!
ALEPH NAUGHT
Later generations will regard
[Cantor's] Mengenlehre as a disease
from which one has recovered.
-Henry Poincare, 1908
A bag with the world in it plus
anything is still the same bag.
Half a bag with the world in it
is equal to the whole bag.
George, it was too early
in the century for this.
Nobody'd had coffee.
I wondered, too, Are we addressing
a collection of only the so-called infinite?
Shoulder to shoulder the cardinal numbers
stood like baby bottles
vanishing forever into one-ooint perspective,
but, Cantor claimed, a bag's a bag:
Forget the bottom.
I'm not counting, he shouted. Stop counting!
Later they packed him off to the funny farm,
a safe house for mathematics,
terrific opportunity for R&D
with free room and board.
Nonetheless he was glum.
The material's all around, he murmured
to the other inmates.
Stack it right, and everything comes out even.
The principle was simple, just matching
your toes with eternity's.
We thought we could live without it.
-Karen Donovan
2 comments:
i am so so too too often overwhelmed. it is this exact endless infinity that surrounds us that consumes at so many points! omg so intense.
"am i to believe eternity outranks my child's finger?"
- annie dillard
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