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wolf921
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Hello this is my first post.
I am a 15 year old 10th grade student in a philosophy program and now we are studying the famous Greek philosophers.
I have a problem that was asked by a teacher that I would like to answer. And although I have tried I have not come up with an answer on my own so I could use some help.
The question:
Can you disprove the Philosophers Parmenides and Zeno in your choice of either a logical reasoning way or a mathematical way?
If you don't know Parmenides said that all movement and change is merely an illusion. Zeno fortified his explanation with a few paradoxes. Since I am more interested in math I want to disprove Zeno mathematically.
Zeno's Paradox is this an athlete is attempting to run from the starting line to the finish line. In order to accomplish this, he must first run to the half-way point of the course. And once there, he must run to the 3 quarters point of the race. And after that he must somehow arrive successively at the 7/8ths, 15/16ths,31/32nd... point in succession. Indeed, this poor athlete must traverse an infinity of points just to finish the race. No matter how close our oily friend is to the finish line, he still has to run half the distance remaining before he can finish the race. Big problem--an infinity of points to traverse. But turning the problem around leads to the difficulty that our racer can't even start the race. In order to get to the 50 percent mark, he must first get to the 25 percent. And to get there he must manage to crawl to the 12.5 percent mark. And so on. To move the first angstrom, he must somehow be able to move the first half an angstrom.
I don't know how to disprove this. I could take the easy way and logically disprove them but this is interesting to me.
My first thought was to find if there is any length that is indivisible. Well not theoreticaly. But may be in the real world. Can anyone help me out?
The del X of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle:
After doing some research I found this theory (that I have never herd of) which after trying to learn about just confuses me. I am not stupid (well maybe compared to the people on the web site) I understand how atoms and sub atomic particles work, or i thought i did until I read this...
If some one could explain to me how to disprove Zeno it would be a great help. I would like if at all possible to understand the Heisenberg theory if it would be helpful to disprove Zeno. If there are any other more obvious ways to do it please tell me. The thing is that Zeno makes sense, but we all know he is quite wrong.
Thanks in adavance!
I am a 15 year old 10th grade student in a philosophy program and now we are studying the famous Greek philosophers.
I have a problem that was asked by a teacher that I would like to answer. And although I have tried I have not come up with an answer on my own so I could use some help.
The question:
Can you disprove the Philosophers Parmenides and Zeno in your choice of either a logical reasoning way or a mathematical way?
If you don't know Parmenides said that all movement and change is merely an illusion. Zeno fortified his explanation with a few paradoxes. Since I am more interested in math I want to disprove Zeno mathematically.
Zeno's Paradox is this an athlete is attempting to run from the starting line to the finish line. In order to accomplish this, he must first run to the half-way point of the course. And once there, he must run to the 3 quarters point of the race. And after that he must somehow arrive successively at the 7/8ths, 15/16ths,31/32nd... point in succession. Indeed, this poor athlete must traverse an infinity of points just to finish the race. No matter how close our oily friend is to the finish line, he still has to run half the distance remaining before he can finish the race. Big problem--an infinity of points to traverse. But turning the problem around leads to the difficulty that our racer can't even start the race. In order to get to the 50 percent mark, he must first get to the 25 percent. And to get there he must manage to crawl to the 12.5 percent mark. And so on. To move the first angstrom, he must somehow be able to move the first half an angstrom.
I don't know how to disprove this. I could take the easy way and logically disprove them but this is interesting to me.
My first thought was to find if there is any length that is indivisible. Well not theoreticaly. But may be in the real world. Can anyone help me out?
The del X of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle:
After doing some research I found this theory (that I have never herd of) which after trying to learn about just confuses me. I am not stupid (well maybe compared to the people on the web site) I understand how atoms and sub atomic particles work, or i thought i did until I read this...
If some one could explain to me how to disprove Zeno it would be a great help. I would like if at all possible to understand the Heisenberg theory if it would be helpful to disprove Zeno. If there are any other more obvious ways to do it please tell me. The thing is that Zeno makes sense, but we all know he is quite wrong.
Thanks in adavance!
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