It has only been in the last century with advent of calculus that we have been able to do something never done previously. That is add up an infinite series. Centuries ago when philosophers like Zeno of Elea were around, they managed to create seeming contradictions between reality and logic. For instance, one idea went that in order to traverse any distance, you first must pass halfway, but first halfway of that, and on ad finitum. Well, that creates a problem in which movement seems only imagination as one cannot traverse an infinite number of spaces in a finite time. It turns out though that calculus is the very way that allows us to add an infinite number of values and find their sum.