Zeno's Paradoxes

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2016

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After 27 years, Melvyn Bragg has decided to step down from the In Our Time presenter’s chair. With over a thousand episodes to choose from, he has selected just six that capture the huge range and depth of the subjects he and his experts have tackled. In this third of his choices, we hear Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Greek philosophy.

Their topic is Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher from c490-430 BC whose paradoxes were described by Bertrand Russell as "immeasurably subtle and profound." The best known argue against motion, such as that of an arrow in flight which is at a series of different points but moving at none of them, or that of Achilles who, despite being the faster runner, will never catch up with a tortoise with a head start. Aristotle and Aquinas engaged with these, as did Russell, yet it is still debatable whether Zeno's Paradoxes have been resolved.

With

Marcus du Sautoy Professor of Mathematics and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford

Barbara Sattler Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews

and

James Warren Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for news about In Our Time, and
0:04.8	for recommendations about our archive, please follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:10.1	I hope you enjoyed the program.
0:11.7	Hello, the ancient Greek thinker, Xeno, a flourished in the 5th century BC. His great innovation
0:17.9	in philosophy was the paradox, a tool to highlight the unexpected consequences of common sense
0:23.2	ideas, to question assumptions and provoke new theories.
0:27.2	For example, according to Xenos paradoxes, motion is not possible. An arrow in flight does
0:32.9	not move. The fastest runner in Homer, Achilles, could never catch up with the tortoise in
0:37.7	a race if he gave it a head start.
0:40.3	Philosophers from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell have tried to refute his ideas or explain
0:45.3	them, with varying success. Innovations in mathematics, when Newton and Leibniz went
0:49.6	some way to demonstrate flaws in Xenos arguments, but the questions he raised, two and a half
0:54.4	thousand years ago, by time and space, are as relevant as ever, and have re-emerged in
0:58.9	quantum physics.
1:00.4	With me to discuss the paradoxes of Xenos are, Marcus, you so toy, Professor of Mathematics
1:05.4	and Simmonia Professor for the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford, Barbara
1:10.6	Satela, Lecture in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews and James Warren, reader in ancient
1:15.5	philosophy at the University of Cambridge. James Warren, what do you know about Xenos?
1:20.2	Not a huge amount is unfortunately art, so we know roughly when he was living in work
1:24.4	in, he's living as you said in the middle of the fifth century BC. He came from Elear
1:29.6	at town on the west coast of southern Italy, and we know that he travelled a lot in Greece
1:36.8	as people of that sort of class did, and he wrote a work, maybe just one work, which included
	...

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