Georg Cantor knew about absolute infinity way back in the day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Infinite
The
Absolute Infinite is
mathematician Georg Cantor's concept of an "
infinity" that transcends the
transfinite numbers. Cantor equated the Absolute Infinite with
God.
[1] He held that the Absolute Infinite had various
mathematical properties, including the
reflection principle which says that every property of the Absolute Infinite is also held by some smaller object.
[2
Cantor is quoted as saying:
The actual infinite arises in three contexts: first when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being,
in Deo, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent, created world; third when the mind grasps it
in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type.
[3]
Cantor also mentioned the idea in his letters to
Richard Dedekind (text in square brackets not present in original):
[6]
A
multiplicity is called
well-ordered if it fulfills the condition that every sub-multiplicity has a first
element; such a multiplicity I call for short a "sequence".
...
Now I envisage the system of all [ordinal] numbers and denote it
Ω.
...
The system
Ω in its natural ordering according to magnitude is a "sequence".
Now let us adjoin 0 as an additional element to this sequence, and place it, obviously, in the first position; then we obtain a sequence
Ω′:
0, 1, 2, 3, ... ω0, ω0+1, ..., γ, ...
of which one can readily convince oneself that every number γ occurring in it is the type [i.e., order-type] of the sequence of all its preceding elements (including 0). (The sequence
Ω has this property first for ω0+1. [ω0+1 should be ω0.])
Now
Ω′ (and therefore also
Ω) cannot be a consistent multiplicity. For if
Ω′ were consistent, then as a well-ordered set, a number
δ would correspond to it which would be greater than all numbers of the system
Ω; the number
δ, however, also belongs to the system
Ω, because it comprises all numbers. Thus
δ would be greater than
δ, which is a contradiction. Therefore:
The system Ω of all [ordinal] numbers is an inconsistent, absolutely infinite multiplicity.
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