"Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand and Eternity in an Hour"

September 29th
Robert Ely - Mathematics
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Abstract: How do we come to understand the infinite? After pondering some paradoxes together, we'll briefly trace the development of human thinking about infinity from Zeno's day to Cantor's. We'll examine how this development illuminates the cognitive moves that learners must make in order to negotiate the pitfalls of the infinite, including the metaphors of object-creation and their accompanying ontological anxiety.