Are there gaps in time

Tags: Philosophy And Debate, Paradoxes
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If an arrow is stationary at any instant in time? It must follow that it is stationary at every instant of time -- so when does it move?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 2 • Views: 757 • Replies: 29

[+1] - rufio - 06/02/2004It's never stationary. Saying it is is a figure of speach that helps us understand physics formulas better.
[+1] - carditel - 06/02/2004In an infinitely small moment it only occupies its own length therefore is staionary.
[+1] - roger - 06/02/2004A moment can be infinitely small? Only if a moment is small enough that it cannot be further divided. so I doubt the arrow is stationary.
[+1] - carditel - 06/02/2004Infinitely small means just that, it cannot be divided any more it is a single moment.
[+1] - stuh505 - 06/02/2004this reminds me of a proposition i heard once: if every time span can be divided in half, then there will always be infinite distance to travel for a moving object, so how can movement occur? ...
[+1] - JLNobody - 06/02/2004Stuh505, that's one of those logical models that has nothing to do with reality as experienced by humans. Remember the tortoise and the hare? The hare could never pass the tortoise because he could...
[+1] - joefromchicago - 06/02/2004[quote="carditel"]Infinitely small means just that, it cannot be divided any more it is a single moment.[/quote] Your "infinitely small moment" is just as illusory as your...
[+1] - joefromchicago - 06/02/2004[quote="JLNobody"]Stuh505, that's one of those logical models that has nothing to do with reality as experienced by humans. Remember the tortoise and the hare? The hare could never pass...
[+1] - JLNobody - 06/02/2004:oops:
[+1] - kuvasz - 06/02/2004depends. depends on if one considers time to be defined as quanta or wave. if electromagnetic radiation is definable as both quanta and wave function, why not time as well? when one looks...

It's never stationary. Saying it is is a figure of speach that helps us understand physics formulas better.

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In an infinitely small moment it only occupies its own length therefore is staionary.

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A moment can be infinitely small? Only if a moment is small enough that it cannot be further divided. so I doubt the arrow is stationary.

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Infinitely small means just that, it cannot be divided any more it is a single moment.

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this reminds me of a proposition i heard once: if every time span can be divided in half, then there will always be infinite distance to travel for a moving object, so how can movement occur?

from a programming perspective, this causes a great deal of trouble when modelling things on a broad scale (such as bullets, or gravity)

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Stuh505, that's one of those logical models that has nothing to do with reality as experienced by humans. Remember the tortoise and the hare? The hare could never pass the tortoise because he could only halve the distance between himself and the tortoise ad infinitum, always remaining behind in some infinitely divisable quantum of space. But we know better, don't we?

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carditel wrote:

Infinitely small means just that, it cannot be divided any more it is a single moment.

Your "infinitely small moment" is just as illusory as your immobile arrow. If any period of time can be divided, then there is no period of time that is indivisible. The infinitely small moment, then, can be divided into two or more infinitely smaller moments, and these divided still further, and so on ad infinitum.

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JLNobody wrote:

Stuh505, that's one of those logical models that has nothing to do with reality as experienced by humans. Remember the tortoise and the hare? The hare could never pass the tortoise because he could only halve the distance between himself and the tortoise ad infinitum, always remaining behind in some infinitely divisable quantum of space. But we know better, don't we?

It's not the tortoise and the hare, JLN -- that's one of Aesop's fables. You're thinking of Achilles and the Tortoise. That, along with the "Arrow Paradox" mentioned by carditel, are two of Zeno's paradoxes.

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depends. depends on if one considers time to be defined as quanta or wave.

if electromagnetic radiation is definable as both quanta and wave function, why not time as well?

when one looks electromagnetic radiation in one way it is a particle, in another, a wave function.

perhaps too this thing we refer to as time.

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Perhaps the best term is wavicle.

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It is like a diver diving off a diving board at which moment of time does he leave the board? he is on the board i.e touching it, the next he has left the board ,so when does the moment of leaving occur?

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carditel wrote:

It is like a diver diving off a diving board at which moment of time does he leave the board? he is on the board i.e touching it, the next he has left the board ,so when does the moment of leaving occur?

The moment that he's no longer touching the board.

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Then he has already left

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Then he has already left

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carditel wrote:

Then he has already left

Then you are raising a mere definitional quibble.

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Does this have to do with Archimedes points in time? Or is that Achilles, Joe?

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kuvasz wrote:

depends. depends on if one considers time to be defined as quanta or wave.

if electromagnetic radiation is definable as both quanta and wave function, why not time as well?

when one looks electromagnetic radiation in one way it is a particle, in another, a wave function.

perhaps too this thing we refer to as time.

is time really a thing? or is it just a notion we use to account for the fact that things appear to happen in a particular order, and not all at once?

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Maybe time is a single unit, all time existing at the same time. we just move through it , time itself is stationary.

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Are there gaps in time

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