8. The inescapable reality of finitude is open to many interpretations, perhaps reducible to two. The first is that the finite equals all, the second that the finite is an expression of an unknown, an X, a something other than finite. The former interpretation has about it a kind of scientific aura, since it excludes any "non-natural" explanatory element. In the form of scientism, it even becomes a kind of tautology: only the measurable is real and therefore what I cannot measure does not exist. The incommensurate is dismissed as a category mistake. The second interpretation is that of faith and of the arts, which find that much of human experience evokes the incommensurate and therefore infinite.
But, of course, neither explanation is testable in scientific terms. Archimedes has no place to stand. One is always inside the question, always part of the problem one is trying to resolve. But perhaps these two interpretation of finitude, these hypotheses, can be tested in other terms—say, of joy, responsibility, generosity. This is essentially what Traherne proposed to us—that the reality of the infinite, shining though the finite, is made known to us as joy and delight and that our own joy and delight find fruition in the love of the Creator and of other human beings.