Zeno of Elea was a philosopher who was born on the colony of Elea in Southern Italy around 490 B.C. He was a student of the philosopher Parmenides. Even though believed to be a mathematician, he is actually a philosopher and a logician. He is well known for his paradoxes. There are forty paradoxes that he created but only eight is well known, His most famous paradoxes are the Dichotomy, Achilles, Arrow, and Stadium. I will discuss only three in this essay.
The Dichotomy states that “motion cannot exist because before that which is in motion can reach its destination, it must reach the midpoint of its course,but before it can reach the middle, it must reach the quarter point, but before it reaches the quarter point, it must reach the eighth point, etc hence motion can never start.” In this paradox, Zeno gives an argument about how all motion is impossible. The Dichotomy paradox is explained using the equation which is a stigma with an infinity symbol above it and the equation n=1 under it. This is multiplied by ½^n=1. This equation means that if you travel from one point to another, an infinite amount of actions does not need to be applied when an object travels from ½ to ¼ to ⅛ to 1/16 and so forth. The sum of these actions will result in …show more content…
However, the tortoise has moved ahead, and Achilles must now reach a new position, which by the time he reaches the tortoise has moved ahead,etc.” Normally a human can move faster than a tortoise but there is a trick to this paradox. It deals with our conception of infinity. Here Achilles task seems impossible because he has to do an infinite amount of things at an infinite amount of times. This is presented when in the paradox Achilles never catches up with the turtle. Here, Achilles can never catch up with the turtle which makes it go on forever to try to reach the