The idea of infinity may make us feel a little giddy, yet we refer to it frequently as if it is understood. Mathematicians claim Georg Cantor cracked the puzzle in the 19th century and enabled us to understand and handle infinities. But is this perhaps a profound mistake? The writer Jorge Luis Borges argued 'infinity is a concept that corrupts and upsets all others'. And now some physicists are arguing infinity is the greatest crisis facing physics, claiming that it generates nonsensical answers in quantum mechanics and undermines all prediction in cosmology. Should we seek to remove infinity from accounts of the universe and rely on the finite alone? Or is infinity a key insight into the character of the universe, however difficult it may be for us to comprehend?
Oxford maverick physicist David Deutsch, leading cosmology theorist George Ellis and theoretical physicist and origin of life expert Sara Walker debate whether the notion of infinity is a key insight into the character of the universe, a mathematical artefact, or simply nonsense. Hosted by the renowned public intellectual, writer and producer Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
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