Where Did The Infinity Symbol Come From?

I promise not to get too far away from languages, but I wanted to take a little bit of time (and I really do just mean a little) to talk about the symbolism of the little infinity symbol we all know and love. The bulk of this mini-article appeared in a previous and much larger work about the Hyperwebster, in which I describe what this means using a procedurally generated library. You should go read about it here, but in the meantime, let’s talk very briefly about where the infinity symbol came from. Probably. Maybe.

The necklace icon of choice for many a woke hipster, the infinity symbol has become a pseudo-spiritual icon beloved by the masses. But who was the bully who decided it’d be cool to kick an 8 on its side and use it to represent the infinite?

It’s okay, you don’t have to guess, I’ll tell you.

It was this guy:

 

This is long-dead Englishman John Wallis. Wallis was a 17th century mathematician, clergyman, and almost definitely the life of every party he ever attended.

He was almost definitely not the first person to kick the number 8 on its side, but he is given credit for having been the first to generally apply it to mathematics, where it first appeared in his 1655 work De sectionibus conicis.

Unfortunately, there are no records of him actually taking the time to explain why he chose to use it, so all we can do is speculate.

One such guess is that it resembles the last letter of the Greek alphabet – omega (ω). Presumably, this letter could imply “the last” or “the end” of something, but chances are that it’s a bit more religious in nature. Famously, Christ and God are(is?) referred to as the Alpha and Omega – the First and the Last – in The Book of Revelations. Since everyone during Wallis’ period was religious AF, relating everything, especially if it’s cool, to God, was sort of the order of the day.

Or maybe the whole thing is just a testicle joke… ω 1Fun fact: the Latin alphabet has also had an omega of its own since 1982 when it was included in the African reference alphabet. Since the 90s, it is used almost exclusively by the Kulango languages of the Ivory Coast.

Another Classical but non-Greek possibility is that it could be a variation of CIƆ – the Roman numeral for 1,000. This was emphatically used from time to time simply to indicate a large, nonspecific number or amount, sort of like “much” or “many”.

These days, despite those perfectly logical reasons, many simply believe that it represents the Ouroboros – that moron snake that eats its own tail. Ouroboros is generally displayed as a circle, and it is possible that the figure 8 imagery is simply a stylistic imagining of it. John Wallis disapproves.

Personally, I dislike the symbol as it pertains to infinity.

If I were to have been an influential Enlightenment-era mathematician, I’d definitely have chosen something a bit more straight forward. Maybe an arrow, or an arrow with a squiggle or cross to make it look different from all the other normal, boring arrows.

 

 

 

Featured image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay