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Supertasks, Physics and the Axiom of Infinity

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Part of the book series: Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science ((LEUS,volume 28))

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Abstract

It seems reasonable to assume that mathematical infinity was not the objective of Zeno’s dichotomy (in any of its variants); however, some kind of mathematical infinity was already at stake in his celebrated arguments. Aristotle proposed a solution to Zeno’s dichotomy by introducing what we now call one-to-one correspondences, the key instrument of modern infinitist mathematics. But Aristotle, more a naturalist than a platonist, finally rejected the method of pairing the elements of two infinite collections (in the case at hand, points and instants) and introduced instead the distinction between actual and potential infinities.

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Correspondence to Antonio León-Sánchez .

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León-Sánchez, A., C. León-Mejía, A. (2016). Supertasks, Physics and the Axiom of Infinity. In: Pataut, F. (eds) Truth, Objects, Infinity. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45980-6_11

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