Is Zeno's Paradox a Valid Argument Against Motion?

[Deepak K Kapur]

Zeno said that you can't finish or start a race because there is an infinty of points between any two points.

Let's take a distance of say 1meter. As per zeno there is an infinity of points in this distance.

So, what is the size of each of these points. Of course, 1/infinity=0. i.e. each point has a zero size.

In other words, the distance of 1m has zero size... ( because whole is at least the sum of its parts if not anything else).

Seen from this viewpoint, is this paradox valid?

 

[PhysicsLad]

I know limit 1/infinity = very close to 0. I.e you can divide into smaller and smaller points but it's never actually 0, because that's not a point.

I may be wrong but that's so small that it hardly has a meaning 'in our world'. So I would solve this by dividing the metre in a measurable quantity. Otherwise you'll never be able to compute a distance because you'll be dividing forever.

This is probably an antiphilosophical approach but I don't know other way to tackle it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think you're conflating two different paradoxes. The one about infinitely dividing something is a separate paradox from the race paradox.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#ParMot

 

[russ_watters]

Zeno's paradox has been little more than bad math since it was proposed and obviously never has reflected reality since we can and do actually move. It most certainly is not valid. And by this point in time it has reached the level of crackpottery, so we're restricting discussion of it. Please just read one of the older threads on it.

Locked.