Zeno's Paradoxes

Abstract

The incessant labours of British industrialists have sent up a pall of smoke over our larger cities. Sometimes the pall descends and causes fog. So it is also with scholarship; the incessant labours of modern scholars often cause a fog to descend upon our understanding of ancient philosophers. A case in point is Zeno of Elea. The paradoxes of Zeno have aroused much discussion ever since they were first propounded; the long history has been recorded by Florian Cajori (The History of Zeno's Arguments on Motion, reprinted from American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 22, 1915). But it was not until quite recent times that men began to doubt the correctness of Aristotle's account of the paradoxes. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a number of French writers built up elaborate reconstructions of Zeno's four arguments on Motion. Refusing to accept the explicit testimony of Aristotle on a number of points, they argued, first, that Zeno must have been more intelligent than Aristotle made him out to be; and secondly, that the arguments, when rightly interpreted and reconstructed, follow a certain pattern. Thus in their praise of Zeno they could not help including an element of denigration of Aristotle.