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Full Idea
The totality is unlimited. For what is limited has an extreme; but an extreme is seen in contrast to something else, so that since it has no extreme it has no limit.
Gist of Idea
Totality has no edge; an edge implies a contrast beyond the edge, and there can't be one
Source
Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 41)
Book Ref
Epicurus: 'The Epicurus Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B. /Gerson,L. [Hackett 1994], p.7
A Reaction
I presume that the 'limit' is the edge, and the 'extreme' is what is beyond the edge. Why could not the extreme be nothingness, which then contrast dramatically with what exists?
Related Idea
Idea 14033 Bodies are unlimited as well as void, since the two necessarily go together [Epicurus]
| 8659 | The gods alone live forever with Shamash. The days of humans are numbered. [Anon (Gilg)] |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 5093 | Continuity depends on infinity, because the continuous is infinitely divisible [Aristotle] |
| 5095 | The heavens seem to be infinite, because we cannot imagine their end [Aristotle] |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| 14032 | Totality has no edge; an edge implies a contrast beyond the edge, and there can't be one [Epicurus] |
| 14033 | Bodies are unlimited as well as void, since the two necessarily go together [Epicurus] |
| 22743 | Unlike Epicurus, Stoics distinguish the Whole from the All, with the latter including the void [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 5704 | There can be no centre in infinity [Lucretius] |
| 5703 | The universe must be limitless, since there could be nothing outside to limit it [Lucretius] |
| 4821 | An infinite line can be marked in feet or inches, so one infinity is twelve times the other [Spinoza] |
| 18519 | If there were infinite electrons, they could vanish without affecting total mass-energy [Heil] |
| 9635 | Given atomism at one end, and a finite universe at the other, there are no physical infinities [Brown,JR] |
| 20469 | There are probably no infinities, and 'infinite' names what we do not yet know [Rovelli] |