Florenskij and Georg Cantor : naming infinity

It might seem surprising to talk about the relationship between a theologian and a mathematician. One deals with matters of faith while the other deals with hard, logical arguments — or not? The relationship might not seem so surprising if I could, in as non-technical terms as possible, explain Cantor’s theory of infinite sets, the objections raised against it, and what an eminent defender of his theory said. I’ll try to do this in these few minutes, without risking going out of point, because this is basically what Florenskij does in his 1904 paper The symbols of the infinite (An essay on the ideas of G. Cantor) (Italian translation), and on which I was asked to comment for this session.peer-reviewe