Infinite Possibility

AfterwordTO INFINITY AND BEYOND

Some of you may wonder if talking about “infinite” possibility is gross overstatement, just so much hyperbole. Well, yes; yes it is—but not by much in any practical sense. To see our point, consider again the LEGO brick, a simple thing of material substance that illustrates that possibility may not be infinite—but it is genuinely immeasurable, and truly limitless.

To Infinity …

Take, for example, the relatively simple case of six 2 × 4 bricks (those with eight studs on top)—and we’ll even ignore color. In 1999 LEGO published the number of possibilities that could be built with just these six bricks: an astounding 102,981,500.¹ This turned out to be a considerable underestimate, however, as it only counted designs ...