The Invisible Link Between Mathematics and Theology

If we compare the mathematics of antiquity with that of the seventeenth century, we find differences in a whole range of aspects. For the ancients, notions like infinity, chance, space, or motion fell outside mathematics, while in the seventeenth century new mathematical theories about these notions appeared. I believe that this fundamental change can be ascribed to the influence of theology. For the ancients, ontology and epistemology were in unity. They considered the world to be as it appeared to them; the phenomena as infinity or chance, which appeared to them as ambiguous, they held to be really so. For modern humanity, ontology and epistemology differ in a fundamental way. The being of the world is determined by the omniscient God, therefore it is perfect, while our knowledge of the world is determined by our finite capacities, and therefore it is ambiguous. It is this gap between ontology and epistemology, which makes the mathematicization of notions such as infinity or chance, despite their apparent ambiguity, possible.