Zenon's Paradox 1


The dichotomy or infinite distance paradox.


Imagine you try to reach a stationary object, any kind of goal or place. Before you can get there, you must get halfway there. Before you can get halfway there, you must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a fourth, you must travel one-eighth. Before an eighth, one-sixteenth. And so on and on.

Your reaching of that fixed distance requires you to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zenon maintains is an impossibility.

This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all.

Therfore the trip cannot even begin. Any travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.


Zenon says change and movement don't exist.





Shotdate | -location:
2008 Nov. 01 | Paris (FR)

Camera | Filmtype:
Automatic 100 | Fuji FP-400B
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Uploaded: Nov. 17, 2008
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