Details

Subject(s)

• Infinite [Browse]
• Mathematics—History—To 1500 [Browse]
• Grosseteste, Robert 1175?-1253 [Browse]
• William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris 1180-1249 [Browse]

Series

Oxford scholarship online [More in this series]

Summary note

This work explores the emergence in the Latinate thirteenth century of original approaches to mathematical infinity and to unequal infinities. Within the span of twenty years (1220-1240), Robert Grosseteste and William of Auvergne countenanced the actual infinite and presented very original views on the possibility of comparing infinities. Robert Grosseteste postulated the existence of infinite numbers that measure the number of points in finite line segments. Until his proposal, no one in Western culture had operated with infinite numbers. Grosseteste's proposal led to debates on what criteria one should use when assigning 'sizes' to infinite collections with one-to-one correspondence being proposed as a challenge to the part-whole intuition defended by Grosseteste. The book offers a methodological proposal on how to engage with the history and the philosophy of mathematical infinity.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Target audience

Specialized.

Source of description

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on November 24, 2025).

ISBN

9780198926917 (ebook)

OCLC

1553676103

Doi

10.1093/9780198926917.001.0001

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