Thursday, October 7, 2010

Zeno's arrow paradox:



At a given instant of time, for the arrow to be moving it must either move to where it is, or it must move to where it is not. It cannot move to where it is not (this is a single instant), and it cannot move to where it is (it is already there). In the given instant of time there is no motion occurring. If it cannot move in a given instant, it cannot move in any instant, so any motion impossible.

I imagine John Cleese, dressed as a pukka British officer, breaking in "This is a silly blog! Stop it immediately." Well, first off, I can't 'cause that would be an instant in time (let's not go there again). Unless of course you want to abandon your "instant" model of time and accept some sort of continuous flow model instead (probably shouldn't go there either). Just stop it now...

No comments: