- Infinity is a big topic. Most people have some conception of things that have no bound, no boundary, no limit, no end. The rigorous study of infinity began in mathematics and philosophy, but the engagement with infinity traverses the history of cosmology, astronomy, physics, and theology. In the natural and social sciences, the infinite sometimes appears as a consequence of our theories themselves (Barrow 2006, Luminet and Lachièze-Rey 2005) or in the modelling of the relevant phenomena (Fletcher et al. 2019). Mathematics itself has appealed to some form of infinity from its beginning (infinitely many numbers, shapes, iterated addition or division of segments) and its contemporary practice requires infinitary foundations. Any field that employs mathematics at least flirts with infinity indirectly, and in many cases courts it directly.
- Star Tales - Sculptor (ianridpath.com)
A faint constellation south of Cetus and Aquarius, invented by the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille during his mapping of the southern skies in 1751–52. His original name for it, given on his planisphere of 1756, was l’Atelier du Sculpteur, the sculptor’s studio, although in the accompanying star catalogue he spelled (or mis-spelled) the first part of the name as ‘attelier’. As described by Lacaille, it consisted of a carved head on a three-legged table, with the artist’s mallet and a chisel on a block of marble next to it (although his illustration actually showed two chisels). On Lacaille’s 1763 planisphere the title was Latinized to Apparatus Sculptoris.
stanford encyclopedia of philosophy of