Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised

by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (ca. 490430 BC) to support Parmenides's doctrine that contrary
to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular
that motion is nothing but an illusion. It is usually assumed, based on Plato's Parmenides (128a-d),
that Zeno took on the project of creating these paradoxes because other philosophers had created
paradoxes against Parmenides's view. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to
show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more
absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one." (Parmenides 128d). Plato has Socrates claim
that Zeno and Parmenides were essentially arguing exactly the same point (Parmenides 128a-b).
Some of Zeno's nine surviving paradoxes (preserved
in Aristotle's Physics
[1][2]
and Simplicius's commentary thereon) are essentially equivalent to one
another. Aristotle offered a refutation of some of them.
[1]
Three of the strongest and most famous
that of Achilles and the tortoise, the Dichotomy argument, and that of an arrow in flightare
presented in detail below.
Zeno's arguments are perhaps the first examples of a method of proof called reductio ad
absurdum also known as proof by contradiction. They are also credited as a source of
the dialectic method used by Socrates.
[3]

Some mathematicians and historians, such as Carl Boyer, hold that Zeno's paradoxes are simply
mathematical problems, for which modern calculus provides a mathematical
solution.
[4]
Some philosophers, however, say that Zeno's paradoxes and their variations
(seeThomson's lamp) remain relevant metaphysical problems.
[5][6][7]

The origins of the paradoxes are somewhat unclear. Diogenes Laertius, a fourth source for
information about Zeno and his teachings, citing Favorinus, says that Zeno's
teacher Parmenides was the first to introduce the Achilles and the tortoise paradox. But in a later
passage, Laertius attributes the origin of the paradox to Zeno, explaining that Favorinus disagrees.
[8]

Paradoxes of motion[edit]
Achilles and the tortoise[edit]

Distance vs. time, assuming the tortoise to run at Achilles' half speed
"Achilles and the Tortoise" redirects here. For the 2008 Japanese film, see Achilles and the Tortoise
(film).
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. as recounted
by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15
In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows
the tortoise a head start of 100 meters, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at
some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will
have run 100 meters, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has
run a much shorter distance, say, 10 meters. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that
distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this
third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the
tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points
Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.
[9][10]

Dichotomy paradox[edit]
That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. as
recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b10
Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there.
Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter,
he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.


The resulting sequence can be represented as:

This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is
an impossibility.
This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any
possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all.
Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over
any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.
An equally valid conclusion, as Henri Bergson proposed, is that motion (time and distance) is not
actually divisible.
This argument is called the Dichotomy because it involves repeatedly splitting a distance into
two parts. It contains some of the same elements as the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox, but
with a more apparent conclusion of motionlessness. It is also known as the Race
Course paradox. Some, like Aristotle, regard the Dichotomy as really just another version
of Achilles and the Tortoise.
[11]

There are two versions of the dichotomy paradox. In the other version, before Homer could
reach the stationary bus, he must reach half of the distance to it. Before reaching the last half,
he must complete the next quarter of the distance. Reaching the next quarter, he must then
cover the next eighth of the distance, then the next sixteenth, and so on. There are thus an
infinite number of steps that must first be accomplished before he could reach the bus.
Expressed this way, the dichotomy paradox is very much analogous to that ofAchilles and the
tortoise.
Arrow paradox[edit]
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.
[12]

as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b5
In the arrow paradox (also known as the fletcher's paradox), Zeno states that for motion to
occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in
flight. He states that in any one (durationless) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to
where it is, nor to where it is not.
[13]
It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for
it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at
every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant,
and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.
Whereas the first two paradoxes divide space, this paradox starts by dividing timeand not into
segments, but into points.
[14]

Three other paradoxes as given by Aristotle[edit]
Paradox of Place[edit]
From Aristotle:
if everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum.
[15]

Paradox of the Grain of Millet[edit]
From Aristotle:
there is no part of the millet that does not make a sound: for there is no reason why any
such part should not in any length of time fail to move the air that the whole bushel
moves in falling. In fact it does not of itself move even such a quantity of the air as it
would move if this part were by itself: for no part even exists otherwise than potentially.
[16]

Description of the paradox from the Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy:
The argument is that a single grain of millet makes no sound upon falling, but a thousand
grains make a sound. Hence a thousand nothings become something, which is
absurd.
[17]

Description from Nick Huggett:
This a Parmenidean argument that one cannot trust one's sense of hearing. Aristotle's
response seems to be that even inaudible sounds can add to an audible sound.
[18]

The Moving Rows (or Stadium)[edit]
From Aristotle:
concerning the two rows of bodies, each row being composed of an equal number of
bodies of equal size, passing each other on a race-course as they proceed with equal
velocity in opposite directions, the one row originally occupying the space between the
goal and the middle point of the course and the other that between the middle point and
the starting-post. This...involves the conclusion that half a given time is equal to double
that time.
[19]

For an expanded account of Zeno's arguments as presented by Aristotle,
see Simplicius' commentary On Aristotle's Physics.
Proposed solutions[edit]
Simplicius of Cilicia[edit]
According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but
stood up and walked, in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno's conclusions. To fully solve any
of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the
conclusions. Through history, several solutions have been proposed, among the earliest
recorded being those of Aristotle and Archimedes.
Aristotle[edit]
Aristotle (384 BC322 BC) remarked that as the distance decreases, the time needed to cover
those distances also decreases, so that the time needed also becomes increasingly
small.
[20][21]
Aristotle also distinguished "things infinite in respect of divisibility" (such as a unit of
space that can be mentally divided into ever smaller units while remaining spatially the same)
from things (or distances) that are infinite in extension ("with respect to their
extremities").
[22]
Aristotle's objection to the arrow paradox was that "Time is not composed of
indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles."
[23]

Saint Thomas Aquinas[edit]
Saint Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Aristotle's objection, wrote "Instants are not parts of
time, for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points, as we
have already proved. Hence it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just
because it is not in motion in any instant of that time."
[24]

Archimedes[edit]
Before 212 BC, Archimedes had developed a method to derive a finite answer for the sum of
infinitely many terms that get progressively smaller. (See: Geometric series, 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 +
1/256 + , The Quadrature of the Parabola.) Modern calculus achieves the same result, using
more rigorous methods (see convergent series, where the "reciprocals of powers of 2" series,
equivalent to the Dichotomy Paradox, is listed as convergent). These methods allow the
construction of solutions based on the conditions stipulated by Zeno, i.e. the amount of time
taken at each step is geometrically decreasing.
[4][25]

Bertrand Russell[edit]
Bertrand Russell offered what is known as the "at-at theory of motion". It agrees that there can
be no motion "during" a durationless instant, and contends that all that is required for motion is
that the arrow be at one point at one time, at another point another time, and at appropriate
points between those two points for intervening times. In this view motion is a function of
position with respect to time.
[26][27]

Nick Huggett[edit]
Nick Huggett argues that Zeno is begging the question when he says that objects that occupy
the same space as they do at rest must be at rest.
[14]

Peter Lynds[edit]
Peter Lynds has argued that all of Zeno's motion paradoxes are resolved by the conclusion that
instants in time and instantaneous magnitudes do not physically exist.
[28][29][30]
Lynds argues that
an object in relative motion cannot have an instantaneous or determined relative position (for if it
did, it could not be in motion), and so cannot have its motion fractionally dissected as if it does,
as is assumed by the paradoxes. For more about the inability to know both speed and location,
see Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Hermann Weyl[edit]
Another proposed solution is to question one of the assumptions Zeno used in his paradoxes
(particularly the Dichotomy), which is that between any two different points in space (or time),
there is always another point. Without this assumption there are only a finite number of
distances between two points, hence there is no infinite sequence of movements, and the
paradox is resolved. The ideas of Planck length and Planck time in modern physics place a limit
on the measurement of time and space, if not on time and space themselves. According
to Hermann Weyl, the assumption that space is made of finite and discrete units is subject to a
further problem, given by the "tile argument" or "distance function problem".
[31][32]
According to
this, the length of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle in discretized space is always equal
to the length of one of the two sides, in contradiction to geometry. Jean Paul Van Bendegem has
argued that the Tile Argument can be resolved, and that discretization can therefore remove the
paradox.
[4][33]

Hans Reichenbach[edit]
Hans Reichenbach has proposed that the paradox may arise from considering space and time
as separate entities. In a theory like general relativity, which presumes a single space-time
continuum, the paradox may be blocked.
[34]

The paradoxes in modern times[edit]
Infinite processes remained theoretically troublesome in mathematics until the late 19th century.
The epsilon-delta version of Weierstrass and Cauchy developed a rigorous formulation of the
logic and calculus involved. These works resolved the mathematics involving infinite
processes.
[35][36]

While mathematics can be used to calculate where and when the moving Achilles will overtake
the Tortoise of Zeno's paradox, philosophers such as Brown and Moorcroft
[5][6]
claim that
mathematics does not address the central point in Zeno's argument, and that solving the
mathematical issues does not solve every issue the paradoxes raise.
Zeno's arguments are often misrepresented in the popular literature. That is, Zeno is often said
to have argued that the sum of an infinite number of terms must itself be infinitewith the result
that not only the time, but also the distance to be travelled, become infinite.
[37]
However, none of
the original ancient sources has Zeno discussing the sum of any infinite series. Simplicius has
Zeno saying "it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of things in a finite time". This
presents Zeno's problem not with finding the sum, but rather withfinishing a task with an infinite
number of steps: how can one ever get from A to B, if an infinite number of (non-instantaneous)
events can be identified that need to precede the arrival at B, and one cannot reach even the
beginning of a "last event"?
[5][6][7][38]

Today there is still a debate on the question of whether or not Zeno's paradoxes have been
resolved. In The History of Mathematics, Burton writes, "Although Zeno's argument confounded
his contemporaries, a satisfactory explanation incorporates a now-familiar idea, the notion of a
'convergent infinite series.'".
[39]

Bertrand Russell offered a "solution" to the paradoxes based on modern physics,
[citation needed]
but
Brown concludes "Given the history of 'final resolutions', from Aristotle onwards, it's probably
foolhardy to think we've reached the end. It may be that Zeno's arguments on motion, because
of their simplicity and universality, will always serve as a kind of 'Rorschach image' onto which
people can project their most fundamental phenomenological concerns (if they have any)."
[5]

Pat Corvini offers a solution to the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise by first distinguishing the
physical world from the abstract mathematics used to describe it.
[40]
She claims the paradox
arises from a subtle but fatal switch between the physical and abstract. Zeno's syllogism is as
follows: P1: Achilles must first traverse an infinite number of divisions in order to reach the
tortoise; P2: it is impossible for Achilles to traverse an infinite number of divisions; C: therefore,
Achilles can never surpass the tortoise. Corvini shows that P1 is a mathematical abstraction
which cannot be applied directly to P2 which is a statement regarding the physical world. The
physical world requires a resolution amount used to distinguish distance while mathematics can
use any resolution.
Quantum Zeno effect[edit]
Main article: Quantum Zeno effect
In 1977,
[41]
physicists E. C. G. Sudarshan and B. Misra studying quantum mechanics discovered
that the dynamical evolution (motion) of a quantum system can be hindered (or even inhibited)
through observation of the system.
[42]
This effect is usually called the "quantum Zeno effect" as it
is strongly reminiscent of Zeno's arrow paradox. This effect was first theorized in 1958.
[43]

Zeno behaviour[edit]
In the field of verification and design of timed and hybrid systems, the system behaviour is
called Zeno if it includes an infinite number of discrete steps in a finite amount of
time.
[44]
Some formal verification techniques exclude these behaviours from analysis, if they are
not equivalent to non-Zeno behaviour.
[45][46]

In systems design these behaviours will also often be excluded from system models, since they
cannot be implemented with a digital controller.
[47]

A simple example of a system showing Zeno behaviour is a bouncing ball coming to rest. The
physics of a bouncing ball, ignoring factors other than rebound, can be mathematically analyzed
to predict an infinite number of bounces.