In following in the footsteps of the idea of infinity it will be shown that assigning a divine status to it accompanied the idea of infinity in early Greek philosophy. Yet, subsequently it was followed up by a dialectical process slowly moving in the direction of a de-divinization of infinity. This process initially shied away from describing God as infinite (in the sense of being unlimited), for the question was how would God be able to engage in self-contemplation if God�s essence is infinite? However, Plotinus, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine started to differentiate between a succession of numbers (accessible to human beings) and observing such an infinite multiplicity all at once, without any before and after (a capacity ascribed to God only). Much later Maimon continues this legacy, for he assigns the successive infinite to a finite mind and the at once infinite to an absolute mind. Wittgenstein captures the heritage of eternity as the timeless present in his own way when he remarks that if eternity does not mean infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. The distinction between the successive infinite and the at once infinite in a certain sense also characterizes the difference between the two mathematicians Cantor and Weyl. The former does acknowledge the mathematical status of both the successive infinite and at once infinite, but then introduces the absolute infinite which belongs to God. Since he rejects the mathematical employment of the at once infinite, Weyl reserves the actual infinite for God. Yet, Weyl is certainly correct in characterizing mathematics as the science of the infinite. While the axiomatization of mathematics succeeded in avoiding the antinomies G�del has shown (in 1931) that consistency entails incompleteness. Consequently, Hilbert had to acknowledge that the insight of consistency is rather to be attained by intuitive reasoning which is based on evidence and not on axioms. Infinity will always occupy a central position in mathematics and it will constantly prompt mathematicians to account for the difference between the successive infinite and the at once infinite in terms of the interconnections between number and space.

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