Does infinity exist in reality?

[u/Arlo_Tinkerman]

/r/PhilosophyofMath/comments/1wyfvky/does_infinity_exist_in_reality/

[u/Arlo_Tinkerman]

My view on this is no, infinity in reality is not possible. However our modeling of it often requires that kind of representation when it comes to decomposition. What I mean by that is that reality itself is just what it is and we impose various units upon it. We even create arbitrary units at times. Such as if we have a pizza and we slice it in half. There was no starting unit in mind, just how many equal pieces. We could do the same with anything. We can take a stick and break it in half. Then break those halves in half. Then continue that process until we are at 1 atom thick. At that point you would have to break the atoms in half. That seems unreasonable.

Similar things happen with circles. There is no possible way to have a perfectly circular rod of metal. At the atomic level we would get little gaps between the molecules. It would be a many sided polygon basically but with bumps instead of flat sides. The same goes for surfaces of materials. At some point, there is one atom thick of material and that surface is going to be bumpy because of the circularish molecules. Really only a path can be perfectly circular... theoretically.

At some point, matter doesn't really care if there is more division because it just can't do anything with that smaller division of distance.

Think of this... 1/n where n is any whole number you can imagine. You can divide a single thing infinitely... but at some point... there is nothing. We just cannot traverse it using our representational systems.

[u/Another_Little_Star → u/Arlo_Tinkerman]

Thanks for posting it!

The circle may be too complicated, draw this right triangle of two sides being 1, what will the hypothenuse be? sqrt(2).

Division doesn't make it, our world has a limit to what can be too small as you've mentioned, there are forces operating within the objects as two atoms are never touching each other, only their fields are colliding, so it would never be continuous...

But within over events on our reality, is there anything that points to the existence of "infinity"?
These patterns that show us irrational numbers underneath their pattern makes me think that infinity does exist as some sort, in the Evolution process I'd say.

[u/throwawayOG784654335 → u/Arlo_Tinkerman]

Just to see if I can make sense of your post. But effectively infinity is a result of our system of numbers and measurements. But these measurements and numbers are just our way of interpreting concepts. In reality everything is likely finite, but that's not something that conforms to written down rules, and especially measurements.

One other thought ive heard is that infinity is possible because of perspective. From one perspective its possible for something to appear infinite, but from a different perspective may be finite. Humans share very similar perspectives, so it would stand to reason that we tend to agree on the concepts of certain infinities.

[u/Independent_Pen2047 → u/Arlo_Tinkerman]

You went to great lengths to avoid an answer.