The Concept of Fractal Cosmos: I. Anaxagoras’ Cosmology
نویسنده
چکیده
Despite the lack of empirical evidence some presocratic Greek thinkers did not hesitate to speculate on a spacially infinite universe. This should not come as a surprise, since the idea of infinite appears tightly bound with the concept of an universe, though not necessarily with the construct of the cosmos. Ancient thinkers did not reach this idea easily, however, since the concept did not appear a part of an everyday experience. Moreover, in modern sense, the notion of infinity comprises a diversity of meanings, and one may distinguish many possible interpretations within eachone of them. Besides the spatial and temporal infinities, one may speak of a numeral one, which term comprises a set of various (possibly hierarchically ordered) ”subinfinities”, as the Cantor’s set theory defines. Adding the notion of quality one may distinguish numeral infinity within the context of diversity. Likewise, with regard to the notion of quantity, one may speak of an infinity with respect to various graduated attributes of a particular entity, like God. Just as it is difficult to pull the concept of infinity out of both empirical or mental evidence, (see, e.g. Gruünbaum 2000) the idea appears so much inherent in any serious meditation concerning the World as a totality, so that the concept turns out to be a part of any reasonable philosophical and cosmological system that has come to us even from the most remote past. In many cases the concept has been (un)intentionally hidden behind the formal verbal exposition of a religious doctrine, or mythological message, that it is necessary to dig under the superficial appearance of the content to find out the concealed assumptions, in particular that of an infinite attribute. (An interesting model for incorporating God into a finite cosmos was contrived by Dante in his Comedia Divina, see e.g. Egginton 1999).
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تاریخ انتشار 2001