The Concept of the Infinite and the Cosmological Problem #982902

Mario Novaro’s The Concept of the Infinite and the Cosmological Problem is a rigorous philosophical inquiry into one of the most difficult questions in modern thought: how the infinite can be conceived without turning it into a mystical object, a mathematical fiction, or a mere limit of human knowledge.
Standing at the intersection of philosophy, mathematics, and cosmology, Novaro examines the infinite from Zeno’s paradoxes and the infinitesimal calculus to Kant’s antinomies, Dühring’s critique, and Cantor’s transfinite numbers. His central thesis is clear and severe: the infinite is not a thing, not an immense number, not a completed totality. It is the sign of an operation that thought may pursue without end, but must not falsely convert into an object.
The essay also offers a powerful solution to the cosmological problem of time. Against the idea of a first cause or an absolute beginning, Novaro defends a vision of nature as an eternal continuity of transformations, in which every change presupposes another change before it.
This edition restores to view a neglected philosophical work of striking depth, revealing Novaro not only as a poet and cultural mediator, but as a thinker of uncommon clarity, capable of confronting the infinite without obscurity, evasion, or surrender.