Syllabus

Approaching Infinity: A History of Imaginative Attempts HIPS 25303, HIST 25011, CMLT 25303, ENGL 11201 Tuesday & Thursday 10:30 – 11:50 a.m. Cobb 301 Spring 2013 Lily Huang [email protected] This course is a history of an inquiry. The problem of infinity and the nature of the infinite have encroached upon the history of thought in sundry ways: it has inspired both caution and self-abandon, humility and hubris; it has driven thinkers to labyrinths of reasoning and heights of abstraction—and yet continued to defy the simplest logic; it has led us into the profusion of the natural world, and it has also turned us utterly away from nature. Where is the infinite to be found? Since antiquity, the infinite has been real to our minds—but some definitions have it that the infinite is precisely that which is beyond seeking. So a better question might be, what kind of mind would create something essentially impossible to find? Across millennia we have, nevertheless, kept up the pursuit—goaded precisely by another, opposite aspect of the infinite: its refusal to go away. As elusive as the idea has been, the infinite has also been impossible to avoid, from the smallest scale to the largest. For philosophers, artists, scientists, and theologians, infinity has been both the shadowy frame of all existence and the persistent snag of every particular, every moment in time. ―Even a tale of wood catching fire in the kitchen fireplace can grow from within until it becomes infinite,‖ wrote Calvino. How are we to approach the world in the fullness of its qualities and relations? Do we truly need, as Roland Barthes suggested, ―a new science for every object‖? For you and me the infinite will be an inquiry about the nature of inquiry. This course, then, belongs not only to the history of science but also to a larger history of the life of the mind: it is a history of a particular aspect of the imagination. That is why the course will range across metaphysics, philosophy, mathematics and literature. Our subject itself will force us to reconsider the meaning and solidity of some old antitheses: science and poetry; reason and imagination; the visible and the invisible; form and freedom. Course requirements Careful preparation of readings for discussion in class. Practical Exercises in Infinity (P.E.)—50%. Assignments involving research, writing, some traveling, much ingenuity. Given on Thursday of each week and due in class the following Thursday. A total of 7 for the quarter; no Exercise due in weeks 1, 6, or 10. Midterm essay—20%. See assignment in week 5. Due in class May 9. 20% of course grade. (20%) Final project—30%. See assignment in week 8. Synopsis due May 28. Project deadline: 10 a.m. June 12. 1

HIPS 25303

APPROACHING INFINITY

Editions of texts (stocked at the Seminary Co-Op) -

Goethe, Faust. Part I, trans. David Luke. Oxford 1987. Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, with the Dictionary of Received Ideas. Penguin 1976. Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar, trans. William Weaver. Harcourt 1985. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver. Harcourt 1974.

All other texts will be given in the course book. Week 1. Does the Subject of This Course Exist? APRIL 2 Aristotle, Physics (4th century B.C.) Book III (―Motion‖ and ―The Infinite‖) Jorge Luis Borges, ―The Garden of Forking Paths‖ (1956) and ―Avatars of the Tortoise‖ (1960) APRIL 4 Aristotle, Metaphysics Books II, IX, XII Paolo Zellini, A Brief History of Infinity Ch. 1, ―Aristotle’s Apeiron: Limit and the Unlimited‖ **First P.E. assignment—due in one week. Expect a new P.E. every Thursday except as noted. Week 2. The Making of Potential APRIL 9 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (1st century B.C.), selection from Books I and II APRIL 11 De Rerum Natura, selection from Books III and IV. Week 3. Oneness APRIL 16 Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584), Dialogues I and V APRIL 18 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Principles of Nature and Grace and Monadology (1714) Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764), ―Chain of Created Beings‖ and ―Chain of Events‖ Week 4. Desire APRIL 23 & 25 William Shakespeare, ―Th’expence of Spirit in a waste of shame‖ (sonnet no. 129) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Part I (1808) John Keats, ―On Seeing the Elgin Marbles‖ (1817) 2

HIPS 25303


Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817) Ch. 13, ―On the imagination, or esemplastic power‖ Wallace Stevens, ―The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain‖ (1954) Philip Larkin, ―High Windows‖ (1974) Week 5. Motion APRIL 30 & MAY 2 Zellini, Ch. 9 ―Leibniz‖ and Ch. 11. ―The Actual Infinite, Indefinite and Transfinite‖ Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar (1985) **Midterm assignment: Write a 3-5 page reflection in the spirit of a chapter of Mr. Palomar. Due in class Thursday, May 9. No P.E. this week. Week 6. Containment MAY 7 & 9 Zellini, Ch. 12. ―The Antinomies, or Paradoxes of Set Theory‖ (pp. 140-179) Bertrand Russell, ―Mathematics and Metaphysicians‖ (1901) from Mysticism and Logic (pp. 74-96) Lewis Carroll, exercises from ―A Selection From Symbolic Logic‖ (1896) Week 7. Order MAY 14 Rhodri Lewis, Language, Mind and Nature, Ch. 5 (pp. 146-187) Borges, ―The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,‖ from Other Inquisitions (1964); MAY 16 Borges, ―Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius‖; ―The Library of Babel‖ (Labyrinths, pp. 3-18, 51-58) Pierre Bayle, ―Zeno of Elea,‖ from Historical and Critical Dictionary (trans. Popkin, pp. 350-388) Week 8. Disorder MAY 21 & 23 Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, including ―Dictionary of Accepted Ideas‖ (1881) **Final project: Prove or disprove the existence of the infinite. Proofs can take the form of any demonstration the likes of which we have seen or have been suggested in this course. 2-page synopsis due in class May 28. Week 9. A Science of the Possible MAY 28 & 30 Alfred Jarry, Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, ’Pataphysician (1898) Benoit Mandelbrot, selection from The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982) 3

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Week 10. Alternate Endings JUNE 4 William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909), Lectures II, VII, VIII Henri Bergson, ―The Possible and the Real,‖ from The Creative Mind (1933) JUNE 6 Calvino, Invisible Cities (1974) No P.E. this week. **Final project due 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, June 12.

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