Footfalls above "we would see the tracing on the stage floor of a tremendously elongated variation of the figures 8 turned on its side … the mathematical symbol for infinity." Beckett was also indebted to the French psychologist Pierre Janet for his conception of hysterical behaviour. In his overview of Janet's work, Robert Woodworth in his "Contemporary Schools of Psychology", a work Beckett read, pays particular attention to Janet's description of the "hysterical paralysis of one arm", which Beckett incorporated, into May's posture. There are a number of analogies between "Footfalls" and Janet's work with a patient called Irène: He lists
Infinity calculations by dividing the region into infinitesimal strips of width on the order of formula_2 But in "Arithmetica infinitorum" (1655 also) he indicates infinite series, infinite products and infinite continued fractions by writing down a few terms or factors and then appending "&c." For example, "1, 6, 12, 18, 24, &c." In 1699 Isaac Newton wrote about equations with an infinite number of terms in his work "De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas". Hermann Weyl opened a mathematico-philosophic address given in 1930 with: The infinity symbol formula_1 (sometimes called the lemniscate) is a mathematical symbol representing the concept of