reductio ad infinitum Phrase
Meaning:
leading back to the infinite
Comment
An argument that creates an infinite series of causes that does not seem to have a beginning. As a fallacy, it rests upon Aristotle's notion that all things must have a cause, but that all series of causes must have a sufficient cause, that is, an unmoved mover. An argument which does not seem to have such a beginning becomes difficult to imagine. If it can be established, separately, that the chain must have a start, then a reductio ad infinitum is a valid refutation technique.
Word-for-word analysis:
A much more detailed analysis with detection of relationships or clauses can be found in our Sentence Analysis! Try it out!
More Information
Embed this entry on your siteVocabulary Groups:
Find more Latin words with our Advanced Search functionality.
"-" is the shortcut for "this form does not exist"
For Students
Most phrases were taken from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons License.