Monday, January 19, 2009

On Infinity

An update on the Archimedes palimpsest is available here. Ironically, one of the recovered texts has to do with infinity (actual infinity, that is). Unfortunately, “Archimedes's key argument about infinity appears on pages so damaged that Heiberg had been unable to transcribe them.”

Image below: One of Google’s oldest books, the Archimedes Palimpsest.