I just heard lecture last Sunday about the *Jain* religion, and was astonished to hear that it incorporates the concepts of both "infinity" and "countable" v. "uncountable" in its vocabulary. I did a quick Google search, but couldn't find out very much about the intersection of the Jain religion and Indian mathematics. I don't think that Ramanujan was Jain, but he certainly would have known something of the Jain religion and ideas. If this connection holds up, then the Indian/South Asian origin of "infinity" becomes firmly established, and the Greeks must have picked it up from them. So this begs the question: which infinity did Ramanujan know? Aleph-0, Aleph-1, omega, ??? At 08:33 PM 7/12/2016, James Propp wrote:
Hi, I started writing a new draft titled "The Man Who Knew Infinity: what the film will teach you (and what it won't)" and would love to get your feedback.