# Zeno's Paradoxes - Motion is an Illusion

Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (ca. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides'sdoctrine that contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion. It is usually assumed, based on Plato's Parmenides (128a-d), that Zeno took on the project of creating these paradoxes because other philosophers had created paradoxes against Parmenides's view. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one." (Parmenides 128d). Plato has Socrates claim that Zeno and Parmenides were essentially arguing exactly the same point (Parmenides 128a-b).

### Achilles and the tortoise

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. – as recounted by AristotlePhysics VI:9, 239b15
In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.

Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.
$H-\frac{B}{8}-\frac{B}{4}---\frac{B}{2}-------B$
The resulting sequence can be represented as:
$\left\{ \cdots, \frac{1}{16}, \frac{1}{8}, \frac{1}{4}, \frac{1}{2}, 1 \right\}$
This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.
This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.
This argument is called the Dichotomy because it involves repeatedly splitting a distance into two parts. It contains some of the same elements as the Achilles and the Tortoiseparadox, but with a more apparent conclusion of motionlessness. It is also known as the Race Course paradox. Some, like Aristotle, regard the Dichotomy as really just another version of Achilles and the Tortoise.[10]
There are two versions of the dichotomy paradox. In the other version, before Homer could reach the stationary bus, he must reach half of the distance to it. Before reaching the last half, he must complete the next quarter of the distance. Reaching the next quarter, he must then cover the next eighth of the distance, then the next sixteenth, and so on. There are thus an infinite number of steps that must first be accomplished before he could reach the bus, with no way to establish the size of any "last" step. Expressed this way, the dichotomy paradox is very much analogous to that of Achilles and the tortoise.