Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Zeno's Paradoxes

As I was reading Zeno's Stadium and Achilles paradoxes, I discovered something that I found very interesting. The paradoxes themselves make sense to me, but that's not necessarily a good thing. I think of the implications of such paradoxes and it makes me very pessimistic. What are the implications of the Stadium paradox for example? If there are infinite half-ways, and it makes theoretical sense, then why is motion for point A to point B practically possible? It signifies to me that there is a disconnect somewhere along the way and I'm afraid that the incongruence arises from us. How can we grasp that it's theoretically impossible to move across the room, yet acknowledge that we still perceive it to be possible? And what if we could somehow free ourselves from this practical world. What if the theoretical matched the practical? Imagine one day waking up and finding that it's impossible both theoretically and practically for you to walk across your room? Certainly, life would be a whole lot more interesting. Oh… and the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise that makes all physics classes I've ever taken seem so useless! No matter how much I try to reconcile the two, they seem like opposites. I can't decide what realer; the theoretical world or the practical world that I experience every moment of my life

1 comment:

  1. As an engineering major, I should probably not research to much, if any, about this.

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