ABSTRACT
Aristotle was concerned, the only serious question that had to be addressed was whether anything in nature anything in the world of space and time was infinite. Aristotle dismissed the view of the atomists, that infinitude could be a property of a plurality. Aristotle had a plethora of arguments designed to show that this was impossible. Some of these were empirical, some conceptual. All of them would be regarded as invalid, though in some cases for very subtle reasons. The net effect of all of this was that Aristotle was faced with a dilemma. A distinction between the potential and the actual played a key role in Aristotle's thought, quite generally. Something may be actually a piece of wood, for example, but potentially a box. Aristotle felt bound to accept that space and time were infinite by division.
