The problem of infinity in the evolution of philosophical, scientific and religious views

The author shows that the problem of infinity vectors the development of the relationship between science and religion. In the classical period, this problem was represented by the relationship between science and Christianity. It was thanks to the idea of the Christian God that the legalization of actual infinity took place in European intellectual culture for the first time. The attempts of the founders of new European science to find a positive understanding of actual infinity solely within the limits of the human mind were supposed to be the most decisive revolutionary step in the history of the genesis of science. This step, however, was not realized, and therefore the very concept of the scientific revolution of the 17th century is undergoing revi-sion. The collapse of the classics was marked by the fact that instead of actual infinity, potential infinity as-serted itself, which became the paradigmatic core of non-classical epistemology, as well as the basis for es-tablishing parallels with the epistemology and ontology of Buddhism. The latter seems to be a promising and encouraging resource, since it justifies those concepts of non-classical epistemology that have been con-sidered problematic by the classics through referring to ancient Eastern wisdom as a tradition older than Christianity. The author shows that despite this, the Western European tradition is characterized by predom-inant positions in the interpretation and evaluation of the features of epistemological non-classics, since it is the Western European tradition that provides the completeness of vision of the problem of actual infinity, including potential infinity as an undesirable consequence of its development.