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A POEM ABOUT ZENO'S DICHOTOMY PARADOX

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2013

Abstract

Type
Other
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2013

Zeno had discovered, much to our dismay,
that to get from A to B, you first must go half way.
But to make it to the middle, you'll have to go a quarter,
and so divide the distances, each one ever shorter.
However, as this process repeats ad infinitum,
Zeno never came across a smallest spatial item,
which he could at first traverse, and so to his amusement,
Zeno had thus showed us the absurdity of movement.
For a set of tasks which are infinite in number,
are impossible to finish, when they've no last member.
So a journey we can't start, let alone complete,
is what we should accept, if space is not discrete.

Envoi

Zeno, Zeno, I read your dichotomy;
Such confusion it caused me,
I need a lobotomy