Achilles Can Never Catch This Tortoise: Zeno's Paradox
Achilles keeps reaching the place where the tortoise used to be. This philosophy film introduces Zeno’s puzzle about motion and the difference between dividing a journey into steps and completing the journey itself.
Read the companion essayA race you can never finish.About Achilles Can Never Catch This Tortoise: Zeno's Paradox
From the public channel description
ACHILLES CAN NEVER CATCH THE TORTOISE 🐢 Achilles runs ten times faster than a tortoise with a 100 metre head start. But every time he reaches the spot where it was, it has moved on: 10 metres, then 1, then a tenth, then a hundredth. Zeno of Elea argued there is always one more gap, so he never catches it. The puzzle stood for more than two thousand years.
The answer: infinitely many gaps can add up to one finite distance. 111.1 repeating metres, about eleven seconds of running. Did Zeno have a point? 👇 Sources: Aristotle, Physics VI.9 (239b14-18); Plato, Parmenides 128c-d; Diogenes Laertius, Lives VI.39 #zenosparadox #achilles #paradox #philosophy #math #ancientgreece #Shorts
