Math Moments – What is the Point?

The most singular concept in Math is that of a Point. In math language, a Point indicates a location in space that has no size or shape (it has no dimensions). People often represent it by a dot “.” on a piece of paper. But, the dot itself has a size and shape, and so it does not qualify as a point.


If you were to magnify the dot, you might be able to find the ink-atom that is nearest the exact center of the dot, but this is not the Point either because atoms have a size and shape. You could try to find the exact center Point inside the atom, but whatever you pick has a dimension and still would not satisfy the definition of a point. This is where you really need to start using your imagination.

Soon you would zoom in to a space around the point that is so small that everything else would be so far away in comparison that you could no longer see any of it, and the only thing inside this tiny space would be the Point itself. You could keep on zooming in for all eternity until the only thing in all space around it would be the point itself.


The Point has zero dimensions. The point itself does not even exist. In math language, it is infinitesimally small. So, what is the Point? By the definition of a Point, it has no size or shape, but it does have an exact location. Exactly how can we describe the location of the Point?

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3 thoughts on “Math Moments – What is the Point?

  1. Doug Martin's avatar Doug Martin says:

    What’s a point

    Your comments remind me of my first exploration into the size of things on the atomic scale. I am also interested in the work of physicist Nassim Haramein who deals with zero point energy or the vacuum as I understand it.

    When I was active with ASEA the concept of the size of a singular cell intrigued me so I did a calculation to put it into perspective. With the assumption of 75 trillion cells in our body, could be more or less, I reasoned what would be the distance if we allowed one cell to be one inch in length, then how does that relate to 75 trillion inches?

    Carrying on, if our Sun is 93 million miles away how would that calculation relate? My math suggests that 75 trillion inches is equivalent to over 6 round trips to the sun and back which kind of blew my mind.

    1 ft = 12 inches

    1 mile = 63,360 inches (12 inches x 5,280 ft)

    (75,000,000,000,000 inches / 63,360 inches) / 93,000,000 miles = 12.72 trips to the Sun or 6.36 round trips to the Sun.

    This helped me to conceptualize things at the quantum level and that we are made up of this zero point energy. The Universe which we have been led to believe is all out there, is also all within us. In other words infinity goes in both directions.

    So at this suggests at the quantum level a ‘point’ is pure energy. “As above, so below”, everything is connected, so what we do to others we also do to ourselves.

    Don’t know if this is the kind of feed back you are looking for but I find it interesting and as always look forward to your writings. Thank you for all you do.

    Doug M

    • In calculus, you usually learn the concept of a point being infinitesimally small by setting up a very small space around the point and then shrinking that space to zero. This is fun concept, and it is amazing how even the smallest space contains an infinite number of points. I think that even people that don’t have experience in math can understand that concept…it is mind blowing! How much space is even in the smallest piece of space? I think that in the future we might have to alter this concept of an unbroken space-time continuum to make better sense of nature. Does infinitely fine structure really exist in nature?

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