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the sequence of pi would be under the rules that are particular to mathematics, so assuming that something infinite is a series that it in principle endless.
my definition is more an explanation: if you assume the term finite, the infinite is simply it's negation. everything that is not finite, then. so it's not a name in the sense that there's nothing to point at. it's an empty signifier that way, a form that delimits. so a pure category.
that's what lead me to the bit about negative theology. if you assume human understanding is finite, then the infinite would not be accessible to it. this follows from strictly applying the same operation i outlined above.
the usual assumption with a noun is that one treats it as a name. there is a phenomenon in the world, you can in principle point to it, this is what that phenomenon is called, how it's referred to. what i'm saying is that this notion of the infinite comes about through another route, through inverting another noun. you could say---and people have (descartes for example)---that because i know the category "the infinite" that it follows that there is such a thing. but that supposes the noun is a name, in the sense the start of this paragraph indicates. if it's not, and it's a negation or inversion of another noun, then it's an empty space. once the category is in place, it functions to point toward this empty space (everything which is not finite). descartes' treatment of it as a name makes little sense outside the particular christian tradition he was part of. it's curious to see it wedged into the meditations on first philosophy, just after the cogito ergo sum business, so just after he attempts to ground philosophy. but there it is. you can see for yourself.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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