Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

Chapter 7
Zeno’s Paradox
Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.
(Heraclitus)
7.1 The Deadly Threat of Zenos Arrow
The battle between the continuous and discrete is exhibited in Zeno’s Paradoxes
about motion as the most basic aspect of the dynamics of the World:
• Achilles and the Tortoise: In a race, the quickest runner can never
overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence
the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.
• Dichotomo: That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way
stage before it arrives at the goal.
• Arrow: If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and
if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any
moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.
Zeno of Elea (490 - 430 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern
Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides based on
the idea that phenomena of motion and change are simply appearances of a
static eternal reality as an expression of duality of appearance and reality.
His work is described in Plato’s dialogue Parmenides.
Zeno’s Arrow Paradox is the toughest and in fact is a deadly threat to
any physicist asking for money, because the following question can be posed
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