Do You Believe In Forever?

Infinity is such an unimaginable abstract that enables human mind to think and learn beyond barriers. The irony is that it is just inconceivable. The last episode of the series “The Story of Maths” entitled “To Infinity and Beyond” was the one that has greatly boggled my mind relative to the other episodes. It has efficiently shown to the viewers that the patterns that mathematics deals with are indescribable and unquantifiable. Georg Cantor had given points on ‘infinities’ in numbers. He affirmed that the infinity of fraction is relatively bigger than that of whole numbers. It’s confusing to think that the size of infinities can be relatively compared though they are technically infinite.

            In relation to infinity, another problem raised in the episode was that “What are the possible shaped for a three-dimensional universe?” I, myself haven’t asked myself this question. Shapes impart different patterns. As illustrated in the episode, when to geometric shapes are merged or molded, they create a common topology. Now, I have then wondered the number of possible combinations of several shapes that can be made from morphing them. This part of the episode also caught my attention as it included interesting visuals. Indeed, I was overwhelmed by some interesting illustrations from simple concepts that I haven’t even encountered before.

            The next part of the episode was quite technical for me as it tackled some of the mathematical problems raised and formulated by David Hilbert. These questions included infinities of decimal and whole numbers, mathematical equations and others. The fact that I honestly did not understand this part of the episode implies that indeed, mathematics is a complex science that covers variety of questions and some of these questions couldn’t even be answered by logic. Another implication is that mathematics is also interconnected not only to the natural science but by the concepts of philosophy and logic as well as to analyzing answers and existence of such entities.

            The last part wrapped it all up as it established the interconnection of all problems previously discuss. It introduced algebraic geometry which is said to be a new language in mathematics as it studies and analyzes structures. The discovery of algebraic geometry led to the solution of certain equations. I wish to see a second season of the series since it is indeed informative and an effective learning material for student who are not into mathematics as well as those who are in the mathematical field.