A Critical Look at Infinitesimals in Physics

Title: A Critical Look at Infinitesimals in Physics
Date: Sept 13 2025 Noon - 14:00 EDT
Summary:
The Greeks were right: Infinities are a dangerous and kind of stupid idea. For example, assuming that the real universe is infinitely differentiable is indistinguishable from thinking it has infinite mass, energy, and light speed. In this talk, Terry will advocate viewing methods such as Taylor series not as approximations, but as direct reflections of the finite limits the real universe places on all infinite and infinitesimal math concepts.

Speaker:
Terry Bollinger is a computer scientist with BS, MS, and Professional Degrees from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Decades of professional and personal immersion in science have made him a firm but extremely reluctant physics and math heretic. Decades of work in AI have also given him opinions on excessive use of LLM-based AI Chatbots, such as advocating that you check into drug rehab as soon as possible if you find yourself incapable of computing sentences without them.