Assignment 1, Zeno's Paradox

September 16^th, 2002

Assignment 1, Zeno’s Paradox

            Zeno’s paradox in short states that for one person to move from point A to point B one must complete half the distance and in order to complete that half a distance one must cover half of the half of the distance covered.  At the end one will not be able to reach the final destination.  The distances that needed to be covered are infinite numbers of points.  It seems logical in mathematics that movement is not possible because if a line were to contain infinite points then there is always the distance in between that would never be covered.  Yet in science an atom is the smallest unit and it is impossible to go smaller than that single unit.  Since Zeno’s also seemed to have omitted the factor of time and making time irrelevant to distance it makes it a paradox. 

            Zeno sided with Parmenides giving the same philosophical argument which is in reaction to refute Pythagoras.  Parmenides believed that the world is like a rock and nothing can be change hence motion is non existence.  If nothing can be changed then does this also apply to man’s destiny or fates? 

            I believe that motion is not an illusion because the concept of time is able to be recorded and everything is relative to time on earth or time that could be recorded in any other methods that is related to the physical world.  This example could be seen in a pair of aging twins when one twin traveled into space and one twin remained on earth.  As the twin in space traveled back to earth he didn’t look as old as the twin who was living on earth in the same amount of earth related time traveled by one twin into space and the other one staying behind.