The Infinite Book [antikvár]

I ¦¦ ' ¦ ,1 Preface 'I am painting the infinite' Vincent van Gogh^ This is a book about the biggest subject of all. Its the ultimate travellers guide to everything that could be: the rough and the smooth guide to infinity. Infinity has hatmted human minds for thousands of years. It challenges theologians and scientists alike to imderstand it, cut it down to size, find out if it comes in different shapes and sizes, and decide whether we want to outlaw or welcome it into our human descriptions of the Universe. Is it part of the problem or part of the solution? It is also a live issue. Physicists' accelerating quest for a Theory of Everything has been primarily guided by an attitude towards infinities. Their appearance can be a warning that you have entered a blind alley on the road to the truth. The enthusiasm with which superstring theories were embraced was a consequence of their ingenious evasion of the problem of infinities that had plagued all their predecessors. These exciting new theories leave us to decide whether we should expect matter to be infinitely divisible. WiU we always be able to find ever smaller, more elementary, particles inside any that we have, like a never-ending sequence of Russian doUs? Or is there a limit, a smallest 'thing', a smallest size, or a shortest time, where division comes to a fiJl stop? Or perhaps the fiindamental entities out of which the world is woven are not really little particles at all?