Product Description

These essays lead the reader through the land of the wonderful shrinking genie to the warehouse where the 'infinity machines' are kept. By careful examination of a lamp that is switched on and off infinitely many times, or the workings of a machine that prints out an infinite decimal expansion of pi, we begin to understand how it is possible for Achilles to overtake the tortoise. The concepts that form the basis of modern science -- space, time, motion, change, infinity -- are examined and explored in this edition. Includes an updated bibliography. A reprint of the Bobbs-Merrill edition of 1970.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #476132 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Wesley C Salmon, Editor

Customer Reviews

All the goods on Zeno's Paradoxes (ancient and modern)
Zeno's paradoxes are some of the oldest surviving arguments in Western philosophy, and they're still some of the most thought-provoking. Like many of the best philosophical problems, they're quite easy to state but tackling them properly can take you into deep issues about reality, mathematics, time and space. Everybody with an interest in philosophy ought to know a bit about the 'Achilles & the Tortoise', 'Racetrack', 'Stadium' and 'Flying Arrow' paradoxes. And they're all here - in detail. Wesley Salmon has assembled a brilliant collection of articles from authors including Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell and Adolph Grünbaum. Taken as a whole, this book offers a very comprehensive overview of the classic responses and challenges to Zeno. (Although be warned: some of the later papers - notably the second and third articles by Grünbaum - can get pretty technical in places.) A couple of good books to read in conjunction with this one, or as introductions to paradoxes in general, are Michael Clark's 'Paradoxes from A to Z' (from Routledge) and Roy Sorensen's 'A Brief History of the Paradox' (from Oxford).