“Infinitesimal - A Dangerous Mathematical Theory”

by Amir Alexander (Scientific American/Farrar – 2014)

This book is much more than an esoteric history of an area of mathematics. It tracks the ancient rivalry
between ‘rationalists’ and ‘empiricists’. The dominant rationalists have always believed that human
minds (at least those possessed by educated intellectuals) are capable of understanding the world purely
by thought alone. The empiricists acknowledge that reality is far too complicated for humans to just
guess its detailed structures. This is not simply an esoteric philosophical distinction but the difference
in fundamental world-views that have deeply influenced the evolution of western civilization. In fact,
rationalist intellectuals have usually looked to the logical perfection of mathematics as a justification
for the preservation of religion and hierarchical social structures. In particular, the rationalists have
raised the timeless, unchanging mathematical knowledge, represented by Euclidean geometry, as not
just the only valid form of symbolic knowledge but as the only valid model of the logic of “proof”. In
particular, this book focuses on the battle between the reactionaries (e.g. Jesuits and Hobbes), who
needed a model of timeless perfection to preserve their class-based religious and social privileges and
reality-driven modernists, like Galileo and Bacon, who were desirous of major changes.

In the late Middle-Ages, the new order of Jesuits were the intellectual leaders of the Catholic Church
and were formed to defeat the recent Reformation. They not only opposed Protestant theology but also
the parallel forces of pluralism, populism and social reform. The Jesuits, like their Church itself and
the ancient social structures they supported, were all organized on traditional (militaristic) hierarchical
principles. In 1632, the Jesuits convened a major council in Rome and decided to ban the idea of
“indivisibles” – the old idea that a line was composed of distinct and an infinity of tiny parts. They
correctly anticipated that the threat of this idea to their rational view of the world, as an “orderly place,
governed by a strict and unchanging set of rules.” Geometry was their best exemplar of their Catholic
theology. The core of the disagreement was over the nature of the continuum, a concept that had
surfaced in Ancient Greece. The reality of the idea of ‘physical indivisibles’ (atoms) was even being
disputed by serious scientists as late as 1900.

The original idea of continuity was stimulated by the apparent lack of observable ‘gaps’ in solids or
liquid materials and our personal sense of the continuous flow of time (ideally, also endless). This idea
became a key concept to many Ancient Greek thinkers; even, Aristotle made the plausible statement
that: “No continuous thing is divisible into parts.” This was soon ‘cast in concrete’ with Euclid’s major
definition of a line as an infinite number of points. This became one of the core (obvious) assumptions
of geometry – the basis of so much of western education. The concept of ‘Continuity’ became a key
Principle of medieval scholastic thought, eagerly latched onto by Aquinas and other theologians in their
battle with the atheistic and equally ancient idea of atoms.
As Alexander describes very nicely there are logical problems with indivisibles (e.g. Zeno’s paradoxes)
and the Greeks knew that these threatened their greatest intellectual achievement – geometry. Actually,
the giant of ancient mathematics, Archimedes of Syracuse, had invented his own ‘method of the very
small’ to calculate the spatial volumes enclosed by circles, spheres and the fact that a circle could not
be squared. The secret of his ‘trick’ was to “almost” cover the target space with a number of polygons
(like rectangles) and then let the number of these polygons become very large, so he was nearly right.
Archimedes’ “analytic” method then remained fallow for almost 1500 years until the Renaissance when
they were reinvented independently by several scholastic mathematicians in a few European countries,
inspired by the rediscovery of ancient texts promoting the atomic idea [see The Swerve by Greenblatt].

This intellectual argument implicitly links back to reality: is matter made of distinct atoms with empty
space between them or are there no gaps between continuous matter? Improved technology led to the
revolutionary discovery of the electron, the discrete seat of electricity that should have torpedoed one
of the great edifices of classical physics, namely Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field. But
no! Newton’s calculus had launched a major branch of mathematics and physicists had used it to build
their City of Classical Physics. They have clung to these ideas like a drowning sailor, thinking that to
let them go, would end their grip on civilization. Indeed, field theory mathematics is found today in
almost every branch of theoretical physics and much of engineering. Luckily, their fears are quite ill-
founded, there is a parallel developments in mathematics constructed around the more realistic ideas of
finite differences, that works at all scales of reality – even the very small, without having to go down
to the problematic scale of zero separation.

Galileo was the leader of the Italian “Infinitesimalists” – those believers in the reality of the
‘indivisibles’. At its peak, Galileo’s support for this dangerous idea annoyed the Church as much as his
astronomical support for Copernicus. This ‘War of Ideas’ created some strange alliances: the Oxford
professor of Geometry and the protestant theologian John Wallis plus several junior Jesuit
mathematicians sided with Galileo and other secularists, while the atheistic Thomas Hobbes supported
the Anti-Infinitesimalists. Hobbes, best known for his arch-authoritarian political tract (“Leviathan”)
considered himself a mathematician to the extent that he believed his political philosophy was founded
on mathematical principles, so that it was as true as any geometric demonstration. Francis Bacon, not a
scientist himself, was a major promoter of the empirical view of nature; he emphasized observations
and experiments as the reliable methods for uncovering the truths of Nature, rather than purely
rationalistic thinking or mathematics.

When Isaac Newton was a student at Cambridge he was powerfully influenced by John Wallis’s book
(Arithmetica Infinitorum). This helped him mightily to invent his (initially secret) Method of Fluxions,
later called calculus. This launched a major new era in mathematics, now call Analysis. Newton made
use of the calculus in developing his “Laws of Motion” but to keep his secret and gain a wider audience,
he finally presented his results using orthodox geometric means in his masterpiece “Principia”. The
“analytic mathematical” tradition was encouraged in England, (especially at Oxford and Cambridge
universities) not only because of widespread anti-Catholicism but the tradition of independent thinking.
French mathematicians followed Newton (and his rival Leibniz) expanded analytic mathematics. All of
this has become the major “toolbox” for mathematical physicists, even today, where it lies at the heart
of all the mathematical techniques known as “Field Theory”.
Rene Descartes was the great compromiser, inventing his key concept of ‘real’ numbers to provide a
bridge between discrete arithmetic and the continuous ideas of geometry; all the while preserving his
Catholic credentials (and his life!). Ironically, Descartes (an acquaintance of Hobbes) gave up his early
fascination with infinitesimals and eventually banned this concept from his ‘modern’ philosophy.

Although the model of the reactionaries was always Euclid's geometry, they never recognized they
were only dealing with unreal definitions, as they faked out their arguments with appeals to 'real' lines
etc. As such, they vigorously rejected the new concept of "indivisibles" (or "infinitesimals", the roots
of calculus) and all ideas that were grounded in empirical studies of reality (like physics and the atomic
hypothesis). Failure to admit debate about reality led Italy back into the Dark Ages while Northern
Europe set off on the course of modernism. This was because the cardinals (and probably the Greek
aristocratic intellectuals) knew they were defining social paths into the future that always follow ideas.

As other reviewers have noted, this book would have benefitted quite a bit by including the story of the
rivalry between Leibniz and Newton, who are jointly credited with the invention of the calculus. As
this book shows, this late 17th Century rivalry had much older roots. Indeed, the book could also have
been improved by establishing this acrimonious debate back in Classical Greece, where the atomic
model, first proposed by Democritus, was immediately seen as an atheistic proposal that threatened
traditional religion. The modern reader might assume that science has now firmly voted for the atomic
model but the extensive use of the calculus embedded in Quantum Physics has preserved the conceptual
features of the continuum advocates, so that we are now faced with the paradox of waves and particles.
These iconic ideas are direct extensions of the two triumphant theories of modern physics: particle
mechanics of Newton and Hamilton and the waves of Maxwell’s field theory of light. None-the-less,
even readers with minimal competence in mathematics will enjoy discovering how this tiny idea of the
infinitely small punctured an ancient dream: that the world is a perfectly rational place that is governed
by strict mathematical rules; an even more dangerous trend spreading its tentacles all over the modern
world.

Ironically, as an atheistic, mathematical physicist, I have come around (after studying mathematics and
much history) to agreeing with the Jesuits but not because I agree one whit with the world views of
these theological fanatics but because heartless mathematics is taking over humanity with its symbolic
manipulations and deceptive statistics. Worse, even Newton had uncovered the limitation of his own
invention (calculus) when he discovered that his gravitational theory was not solvable when evaluating
systems of three or more astronomical bodies (the infamous Three-Body problem). Later, quantum
theorists have also run aground on this same reef with the (two electron) helium atom and have gained
minimal insights into the hydrogen atom (beyond Bohr’s simple model) when they used the advanced
mathematics of field theory (Schrödinger’s Equation). Worse, the latest expensive experiments on the
very small, show that numbers do not always correspond to reality, so that our worldview is becoming
partial and provisional – our best theories could easily be replaced by better ones. Luckily, the victory
of the “indivisibles” opened the way to religious toleration and to political freedoms.

Perhaps, even today’s most arrogant profession (the Queen of the Sciences) would not be so self-
assured if they studied their own history and realized how much was built on sand? Meanwhile, other
social scientists should be a little more circumspect before they start designing our future with what
often degenerates into traditional social hierarchies. Liberal scholars would benefit from seeing the
holes in their rivals’ prestigious empires. This book is so valuable to so many people!