It is sometimes suggested that the human mind is so humble that the infinite is beyond our conception. However, this is clearly mistaken; on the contrary, it is the sharply limited case, it is the concept of the finite that is hard to hold in mind.

If we entertain a thought of a universe with beginning, end, and spatial boundaries, we cannot avoid simultaneously implying and noting, in the corner of the eye as it were, time before the beginning and after the end, and space beyond the fences that we have erected.

Similarly, it is curiously difficult to think of a singularity, a one off, or even a limited number of objects, apples say. If I think of one or two apples, it is only by isolating one or two from an infinite series of apples that probably do exist. The case of the singularity is the inverse of this: the earth is unique, but if I think about that unique state, I define it by postulating replicas, the reality of which I then deny as improbable.

Just as we cannot do only one thing, it seems impossible to think of only one thing. Perhaps this is the reason that grand gestures, religious vistas, muddled, holistic, 'big picture' banalities, are so common, and focused causal analysis is so terribly difficult to find.