Friday, January 06, 2006

Inspiration & Paradox 31: Motion is an illusion?

Have you heard of the famous Zeno's Paradoxes which have interesting arguments about motion?
The first one I know is called the Dichotomy Paradox. Basically it says that if you want to get to a point that is say, 100 meters away, you must first get to the 50-meter mark, and to reach that, the you have to complete 25 meters. But to do that, you must first finish 12.5 meters, and so on and so forth. Since space is infinitely divisible, we can repeat these 'requirements' forever. Thus you have to reach an infinite number of 'midpoints' in a finite time. This is impossible, so you can never reach his destination.
Another one is known as the Arrow Paradox: A flying arrow at any given time has a certain position, and so does a motionless arrow. The question then is: which arrow then is actually moving?

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