PHILOS 2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Billiard Ball, Logical Form, Discrete Series Representation
Document Summary
Lecture 3: zeno"s paradoxes by prof. sven bernecker. Zeno of elea (ancient greek philosopher, 490 430 bc; elea is now velia, southern italy) Paradoxes of motion credited to zeno of elea: a group of the oldest, and most historically important, paradoxes ever set forth. Hence, reconstructing his arguments is partly a matter of conjecture. Zeno had upwards of 40 arguments against the reality of motion, most of which are unknown to us. We will be discussing four of his arguments: these four paradoxes can be separated into two groups: There is no smallest member; you will always find another: in a discrete series you will find two members and there will be. The series of rational numbers is continuous. We can never come up with a pair of rational numbers say, 1. 23456 and 1. 23457 which are so close together that there is no rational number in between them.
