Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

possible to make that first giant piglet. (I know this would be a horrible universe, especially for vegetarians, but bear with me.) Well, more

piglets and more tins, but same conclusion. Eventually, within a finite number of times, the regression has to stop.

Here though is where the real bite of the infinite regress takes place. What if the universe is

infinite and we start our piglet and tin regress with an infinitely large reclining piglet? Then, surely, the regress would be truly infinite. The real rub though is that, whilst we can conceive this thought experiment, we would probably all agree that, in practical terms, it would not be possible.

We could generalise this a bit, and say – as an initial conjecture – that there are ‘perfections’ in the world that we can imagine and which can be realised. No problem with this. But, there may be perfections in the world that can be imagined, but which can never be realised. That’s why this infinite regress has such bite, and why it disturbs so much, as I’ve tried to show with the piglets in this example.

Well, dear reader, you may, at this point, be thinking that I have gone with an especially absurd example, just to demonstrate some obscure and irrelevant point. But, I would

counter, these imagined perfections that are nonetheless unachievable actually surround us at every turn.

Take, for example, the Fibonacci ratio – otherwise known as the Golden mean. It’s a simple fraction and is, in this sense, mathematically perfect. It occurs frequently in nature, but here the perfection is never quite reached. There has, instead, to be a series of whole numbers – the Fibonacci sequence –

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