Charles Seife Quote

The Greeks couldn't do this neat little mathematical trick. They didn't have the concept of a limit because they didn't believe in zero. The terms in the infinite series didn't have a limit or a destination; they seemed to get smaller and smaller without any particular end in sight. As a result, the Greeks couldn't handle the infinite. They pondered the concept of the void but rejected zero as a number, and they toyed with the concept of the infinite but refused to allow infinity-numbers that are infinitely small and infinitely large-anywhere near the realm of numbers. This is the biggest failure in Greek mathematics, and it is the only thing that kept them from discovering calculus.

Charles Seife

The Greeks couldn't do this neat little mathematical trick. They didn't have the concept of a limit because they didn't believe in zero. The terms in the infinite series didn't have a limit or a destination; they seemed to get smaller and smaller without any particular end in sight. As a result, the Greeks couldn't handle the infinite. They pondered the concept of the void but rejected zero as a number, and they toyed with the concept of the infinite but refused to allow infinity-numbers that are infinitely small and infinitely large-anywhere near the realm of numbers. This is the biggest failure in Greek mathematics, and it is the only thing that kept them from discovering calculus.

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About Charles Seife

Charles Seife is an American author, journalist, and professor at New York University. He has written extensively on scientific and mathematical topics.